BY MARION HARLAND 
 
 Some Colonial Homesteads, and Their 
 Stories. With S6 illustrations. 3^, gilt top, 
 
 $3.00 
 
 Where Ghosts Walk. The Haunts of 
 Familiar Characters in History and Liter- 
 ature. With 33 illustrations. S", gilt top, 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London
 
 WHERE GHOSTS WALK
 
 Savonarola in his Cell at San Alarco.
 
 Where 
 Ghosts 
 Walk 
 
 © The Haunts of 
 Familiar Characters 
 ® in History and 
 Literature © © 
 
 By 
 
 Marion Harland 
 
 Author of " Some Colonial Homesteads," etc. 
 
 Illustrated 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York London 
 
 27 West Twenty-Third Street 24 Bedford Street, Strand 
 
 Ube Itnictierboclter prees
 
 Copyright, i8g8 
 
 BY 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 
 
 '1 17 
 
 Ube ttnicherbochec |pree6, 1\cw Uorh
 
 To My Daughters, — 
 CHRISTINE TERHUNE HERRICK, 
 
 IN WHOSE DEAR COMPANY 1 VISITED THE SCENES SKETCHED 
 
 IN THESE PAGES, 
 
 AND 
 
 VIRGINIA BELLE VAN DE WATER, 
 
 my patient and faithful amanuensis in the 
 
 preparation of the manuscript 
 
 for the press, — 
 
 This Volume is 
 Affectionately Dedicated. 
 
 MARION HARLAND. 
 
 London, England, 
 
 August, iSgS.
 
 Five of tlie sketches included in this book are reprinted 
 by the courtesy of the publishers, Harper & Brothers, from 
 the columns of Harper s Bazar.
 
 
 -i) k 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 1. — Two Little Rooms 
 
 II. — "Only a But an' a Ben" 
 
 III. — " Hei? Gloomy Honeymoon ' 
 
 IV. — "An Eating-House for Goodly 
 Fare " .... 
 
 V. — No. 24 Ciieyne Row 
 
 VI. — Dante's Every-Day Wife 
 
 VII. — The Prophet of San Marco 
 
 VIII. — A Fourteenth-Century New Wo 
 
 MAN 
 
 IX. — The Ginevra Tale 
 
 X. — John Keats in Rome 
 XI. — Told on the Lagoon 
 XII. — In Ravenna 
 XIII. — II Magnifico 
 XIV. — As IN David's Day 
 XV. — In Villette 
 
 17 
 29 
 
 47 
 
 63 
 
 83 
 
 103 
 
 121 
 
 147 
 163 
 
 185 
 205 
 231 
 261 
 
 277
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Savonarola in his Cell . Frontispiece 
 Queen Mary's Bedroom, Holyrood Pal- 
 ace 4 
 
 Holyrood Palace, with Arthur's Seat 
 
 IN the Distance ..... io 
 "Bed-place" in which Burns was Born . 20 
 
 The Burns Cottage 26 
 
 Wolsey's Hall, Hampton Court . . 32 
 Hampton Court Palace .... 34 
 Entrance to the "Old Cheshire Cheese" 
 
 IN Wine Office Court * . 50 
 
 From an original drawing by Herbert Railton. 
 
 Johnson's Seat, with Portrait. '■ Old 
 
 Cheshire Cheese"* .... 52 
 
 By Seymour Lucas, B.A. 
 Staircase in " Old Cheshire Cheese " * . 56 
 From an original drawing by Herbert Railton. 
 
 * By permission of ^Tr. Charles Moore. 
 ix
 
 X 
 
 Illustrations 
 
 "The Cosey Corner" in "Old Cheshire 
 
 Cheese " * . . . . . .60 
 
 By Seymour Lucas, R.A. 
 Caklyle's Attic Study .... 70 
 
 Carlyle's House and Garden ... 80 
 Church of San Martino, in which Dante 
 
 was Married ..... 92 
 
 Dante Alighieri, from the Fresco by 
 
 Giotto, Florence .... 98 
 
 Cell of Savonarola in Convent of San 
 
 Marco 108 
 
 Palazzo Vecchio, Florence . . .118 
 Entrance to Saint Catherine's House . 126 
 Saint Catherine of Siena . . . 132 
 
 Headquarters of the Misericordia in 
 
 Florence 152 
 
 Mercato Vecchio (now Demolished) . 154 
 Graves of Keats and Severn in the Pro- 
 testant Cemetery in Rome . .170 
 Shelley's Tomb in the Protestant Ceme- 
 tery, Rome 184 
 
 The "Cathedral Group" of Torcello . 188 
 Bishop's Throne in Cathedral of Tor- 
 cello. Built by Orso Orseoli . . 194 
 Byron's House in Ravenna . . . 210 
 
 * By permission of Mr. Charles Moore.
 
 Illustrations xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dante's Tomb in Ravenna . . 220 
 
 Lorenzo the Magnificent . . 244 
 
 LiLiED Pool and Fountain in Grounds 
 
 OF Villa Caregci . . . 250 
 A Syrian Professional Dancer and Mu- 
 sician 272 
 
 From photoi^raph in the " Christian Herald" 
 
 collection. 
 
 Public Park of Brussels . . . • 284 
 The Garret in Madame Beck's House 290 
 Forbidden Walk in Madame Beck's Gar- 
 den, with Adjacent College Build- 
 ings 292 
 
 In Madame Beck's Garden . . . 296
 
 I 
 
 TWO LITTLE ROOMS
 
 TWO LITTLE ROOMS 
 
 THE " Supplng-Room " of Mary Stuart, 
 in Holyrood Palace, is the smallest 
 of the royal suite. It is a mere closet, 
 and now bare and depressing to a degree 
 utterly incompatible with our ideas of 
 tolerable comfort, until we remind our- 
 selves that the stone walls were once 
 masked by richly wrought hangings and 
 the cold floors softened by carpets 
 brought, or imported, by Mary into rug- 
 ged Scotland from her beloved France. 
 
 A small door opens into a closet used 
 for storing wines and other accompani- 
 ments of the petits sotipers which the 
 Queen was fond of giving to her inti- 
 mates. The entrance to the supping-room 
 is from her bedchamber. The walls of 
 this are still hung with tapestries selected 
 3
 
 4 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 by her, a faded confusion of knights in 
 armour and plunging horses. The cano- 
 pied bed, covered with a tattered silk cov- 
 erlet, was also hers. Over the mantel is a 
 half-length portrait of Queen Elizabeth. 
 We hope — mercifully — that it was not 
 here in her hapless rival's time. 
 
 The tapestry is looped away from the 
 door of the supping-room, and from an- 
 other and a smaller door close beside 
 it, raised by a single step from the floor. 
 This leads to the winding stone stair con- 
 necting the Queen's bedchamber with 
 Darnley's. The little door is kept locked. 
 Darnley had the key, and his alone was 
 the right to use it on Saturday night, the 
 ninth of March, 1566, when Queen Mary 
 had bidden a few friends to supper. How 
 few, we comprehend as we survey the tiny 
 withdrawing-room. Her half-sister, the 
 Countess of Argyle, two ladies-in-waiting, 
 a couple of gentlemen of the Court, a page 
 who held the candles, and her Italian Sec- 
 retary, David Rizzio, must have crowded 
 the closet to discomfort when the table 
 and chairs were in place.
 
 Two Little Rooms 5 
 
 When Darnley — otherwise King Henry 
 and husband of the Queen, who, hke Saul, 
 was higher than any of the people from 
 his shoulders and upward, — stooped to 
 clear the lintel of the low doorway, and 
 showed to the party his handsome face, 
 flushed with wine, nobody was surprised. 
 As he seated himself upon the elbow of 
 his wife's chair, and put his arm about her 
 waist, the fairest face in all Scotland was 
 lifted, smilingly expectant, to his. The 
 change of position showed to Mary what 
 she, at the first glance, mistook for the 
 ghost of Lord Ruthven, in full armour, 
 filling up the door behind her. He had 
 arisen from a sick-bed to lead the con- 
 spirators. 
 
 We all know the story, — better perhaps 
 than any other in the records of a land 
 whose history is a continuous romance. 
 Rizzio, torn from his frantic clinging 
 to the skirts of his Royal employer, 
 was dragged through the bedroom and 
 through the larger audience-room beyond, 
 there dispatched by fifty-six dagger- 
 thrusts, then kicked, like a dead dog,
 
 6 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 down the palace stairs into the court 
 below. 
 
 In an affidavit prepared by Ruthven he 
 " takes God to record that the said Davie 
 received never a stroke in Her Majesty's 
 presence, nor was not stricken till he was 
 at the farthest door of Her Majesty's utter 
 chamber." 
 
 His insistence upon this evidence of 
 respectful forbearance in the Royal 
 presence may be a cruel refinement of 
 punctilio, but, if it be true, it disposes 
 thoroughly of the historic blood-stains 
 upon the floor of the little inner room, 
 which even Sir Walter Scott was disposed 
 to believe genuine, and which the con- 
 scientious annalist, Robert Chambers, does 
 not gainsay. We look vainly for them 
 to-day and openly avow our disappoint- 
 ment. The hoary custodian declares 
 boldly that he " got tired of renewing " 
 the brown blotches. 
 
 " The floor was relaid two hundred and 
 more years ago," he says. " Yet I found 
 the stains here when I came, and when 
 they wore out visitors insisted upon seeing
 
 Two Little Rooms 7 
 
 them. So " — with a shrug that is more 
 French than Scottish — "what was I to 
 do?" 
 
 The first shock of disillusionment over, 
 imagination rallies to contemplate the 
 actual features of the tragedy. Queries 
 which no man living can answer, and 
 touching which contemporary records are 
 mute, press to our lips. 
 
 Did Mary sleep in her own bed that 
 night? Was the Sunday-morning inter- 
 view with her weak and vicious boy-hus- 
 band that terminated in their reconciliation, 
 held in the bedroom, or in the audience- 
 chamber beyond ? By what wiles did he 
 induce her to forego the purpose ex- 
 pressed in the impassioned outbreak that 
 met his first words of penitence ? 
 
 " You have done me such a wrong that 
 neither the recollection of our early friend- 
 ship, nor all the hope you can give me of 
 the future, can ever make me forget it ! " 
 
 Darnley " thankfully received " her half- 
 brother Murray on Sabbath evening, and 
 Mary would not suffer her kinsman to 
 sup with Morton as had been planned,
 
 8 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 but kept him with her all the evening. 
 She " embraced and kissed him, alleging 
 that in case he had been at home, he 
 would not have suffered her to have been 
 so incourteously handled." 
 
 Did the three, Darnley, Murray, and 
 Murray's sister, whose talk " so moved 
 him that the tears fell from his eyne," sup 
 amicably and not uncheerfully in this room 
 that Sunday night ? 
 
 On Monday, " Her Majesty took the 
 King by one hand and the Earl of Mur- 
 ray by the other, and walked in her utter 
 chamber" — /. ^,, the audience-chamber up- 
 on the threshold of which Rizzio's blood 
 was hardly dry — " the space of an hour." 
 
 What did they talk of while pacing the 
 floor over which the shrieking favourite 
 was dragged by his murderers forty-eight 
 hours before ? 
 
 History never has, and never will clear 
 up the " muddle." 
 
 Her child — James First of England 
 and Sixth of Scotland — was born on the 
 nineteenth of June of that same year, in 
 another little room no larger than the
 
 Two Little Rooms 9 
 
 supping-closet of Holyrood, but in the 
 stronger Castle of Edinburgh. The walls 
 are panelled with oak, blackened by age. 
 The initials " M. R." and " I. R." are 
 wrought into the carvings of the ceiling. 
 A shield upon the wall above the fireplace 
 bears the inscription : 
 
 "19 JVNII. 1566." 
 
 Above the only spot in the room where 
 the bed could have stood, the royal arms 
 are emblazoned, and beneath is what pur- 
 ports to be " the young mother's prayer 
 of thanksgiving on that auspicious occa- 
 sion " — in black-letter : 
 
 ^orb lestt C^rgst, t^at trohjnit tuas faitlj ^^oxnt, 
 ^reserfae l^t ^irtl^, qu^ais ^abgie Ijtir is hoxnt, 
 ^nb senb ^ir ^onne eutcessioitc, to ^eigne still 
 ^ang in t^is ^calme, if t^at it be t^g bill. 
 ^Is grant, 6 Iforb, qu^at tbtx of ^ir prosetb, 
 ^e to t^g (iloric, Honer anb ^rais, sobiib. 
 
 The spacious apartment adjoining the 
 wee inner room was tapestried for Mary's 
 use with " cloth-of-gold and brocaded taf- 
 feta. The floors were covered with Turk- 
 ish rugs, the tables were of massive oak,
 
 lo Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 elaborately carved ; the chairs were cov- 
 ered with gilded leather and had cushions 
 of brocade and damask." 
 
 We hearken indifferently to the cata- 
 logue, and turn back to our little room. 
 Mary entered Edinburgh Castle, by the 
 advice of her Privy Council, on the third 
 of April, and, as was the royal etiquette in 
 such circumstances, took to her chamber 
 on the third of June. From the single 
 window of this she looked down upon her 
 capital city, that had already begun to dis- 
 trust her. Beyond the housetops towered 
 the broad bulk of Arthur's Seat, seen at a 
 greater distance than from Holyrood, but 
 in the perspective looking yet more like a 
 couchant lion, watchful of Scotland's hon- 
 our and Scotland's religion. She must al- 
 most have hated the sight of it during 
 that weary fortnight of waiting. 
 
 The room is irregular in shape and less 
 than eight feet square. The bed must 
 have been a mere cot, and if other besides 
 Mary Beaton — now Lady Boyne — and 
 the court physician were present, there 
 could not have been left space for more
 
 Two Little Rooms n 
 
 furniture than the quaint arm-chair still 
 standing against the wainscot and which 
 we are told was here then. 
 
 Yet tall Darnley was accompanied by 
 at least one friend when he visited his 
 wife at two o'clock of the same day, the 
 Prince having been born between nine 
 and ten in the morning. Mary, with her 
 own hand, drew aside the coverings from 
 the baby's face. 
 
 " My Lord," she said, solemnly, " God 
 has given us a son." 
 
 She would have been more than woman 
 if, in the weakness of the hour, she had 
 not referred to the risk she and the heir 
 to the crown had run on that awful Satur- 
 day night, three months agone. 
 
 "Sweet Madam," pleaded the father 
 (himself not yet one-and-twenty), " is this 
 the promise that you made, that you would 
 forget and forgive all ? " 
 
 " I have forgiven all," said the Queen. 
 " I never will forget." 
 
 Darnley fidgeted uneasily. 
 
 " Madam, these things are past." 
 
 ** Then," was the answer, " let them go."
 
 12 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 The record of this interview is the 
 only glimpse we have of anything that 
 passed in the strait birth-chamber in the 
 after part of that day. 
 
 Before the visitor enters the Castle his 
 attention is directed to a section of com- 
 paratively new masonry in the outer wall 
 in ominous juxtaposition to the board 
 lettered, " Queen Mary's Apartments." 
 The story told and believed by guides 
 and townspeople, and set down without 
 comment in guide-books to Edinburgh 
 Castle, is that, in 1830, workmen engaged 
 in repointing the masonry noticed that 
 the wall sounded hollow at that spot, and 
 removed several stones to get at the 
 cavity. They found behind them in "a 
 recess measuring about two feet six inches 
 by one foot," the skeleton of a male infant 
 in an oak coffin, " evidently of great anti- 
 quity and much decayed." 
 
 I copy the rest of the record : 
 
 " The remains were wrapped in a cloth, 
 believed to be woollen, very thick, and 
 somewhat resembling leather, and within 
 this the remains of a richly embroidered
 
 Two Little Rooms 13 
 
 silk covering. Two initials were wrought 
 upon it, and one of them, an /, was dis- 
 tinctly visible. By order of Major-General 
 Thackery, then commanding the Royal 
 Engineers, the crumbling relic of humanity 
 was again restored to its peculiar resting- 
 place, and the aperture closed up." 
 
 We discuss, in guarded tones, the 
 incident that may have been an Event, 
 while we stand in the deeply embrasured 
 window of the little room, the black-letter 
 inscription, which Mary did not indite, 
 before us. Then we pass, treading lightly, 
 as might befit the bearers of a moment- 
 ous state secret, into the larger apartment 
 for a critical inspection of the unpleasing 
 visage of James First of England and 
 Sixth of Scotland. " The son who, I 
 hope, shall first unite the two kingdoms 
 of Scotland and England," said Mary to 
 an English gentleman who accompanied 
 Darnley upon the visit alluded to just 
 now. 
 
 The peace of both kingdoms and the 
 perpetuity of Scottish national existence 
 depended upon the breath of the infant
 
 14 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 whose birth was preceded by such stress 
 of battle, murder, and sudden death as 
 might well have cost mother and child 
 their lives. 
 
 His father, near akin to both Mary and 
 Elizabeth, was " a comely Prince, of a 
 fair and large stature of body, pleasant 
 in countenance, affable to all men, as well 
 exercised in martial pastimes upon horse- 
 back as any Prince of that age, but was 
 so facile he could conceal no secret," 
 writes one historian. Another — " He was 
 of a comely stature, and none was like unto 
 him within this island . , . prompt 
 and ready for all games and sports." 
 Still another, that he was " accomplished 
 in all excellent endowments, both of body 
 and of mind." 
 
 The personal and mental charms of 
 Mary Stuart need no recapitulation. No 
 other woman known to history, Cleopatra 
 not excepted, ever exercised such magic 
 sway over whomsoever she willed to 
 captivate. 
 
 Her best authenticated portrait, taken 
 when she was Dauphine of France, is
 
 Two Little Rooms 15 
 
 upon the same wall and in a line with 
 that of " James VI., son of Queen Mary 
 and Lord Henry Darnley." 
 
 We look from the pictured face of the 
 beautiful woman to that of the homely, 
 boorish successor of two famous queens, 
 recalling that he was also gawky in car- 
 riage, plebeian in taste, and so cowardly 
 that he padded his doublet for fear of 
 the assassin's knife, and loathed the sight 
 of warlike weapons, — and account this, 
 the offspring of royal parents, a freak of 
 heredity. With a sort of passionate curi- 
 osity that burns within us like a fever, 
 we query again, and always vainly, what 
 never-to-be-revealed scenes went on in 
 that little room on the nineteenth day of 
 June, 1566, where lately wedded Mary 
 Beaton kept guard over the exhausted 
 mother and the Prince who was to unite 
 the kingdoms of Scotland and of Eng- 
 land.
 
 II 
 
 ONLY A BUT AN' A BEN " 
 
 17
 
 II 
 
 "ONLY A BUT AN' A BEN" 
 
 TO say that the " auld clay biggin " in 
 which Robert Burns was born is 
 humble and homely, even for a peasant's 
 thatched cottage, is to give an inadequate 
 idea of the place to one who has never 
 stood within it. The four-roomed story- 
 and-a-half Shakespeare house at Strat- 
 ford-on-Avon is commodious and more 
 than respectable beside it. 
 
 If chimney, dresser, pantry, and bed- 
 place were taken out of the " but," or 
 kitchen, we should have a chamber meas- 
 uring fifteen feet one way and sixteen the 
 other. The projections I have enumer- 
 ated contract the clear space to about ten 
 feet. The floor is of flat stones, irregu- 
 19
 
 20 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 larly laid, and the interstices are filled 
 with mortar. The " bed-place " is a niche 
 in the wall opposite the chimney — a com- 
 mon feature in Scottish farmsteads and 
 cottages. It is between three and four 
 feet deep, and a trifle over five feet long, 
 and is filled by a bed covered with a dark 
 counterpane of homespun. The open 
 front is protected by a coarse network of 
 wire, as royal regalia and delicate works 
 of art are shielded from lawless handling. 
 Blue curtains, that, when closed, hid bed 
 and occupants, are pulled back to reveal 
 recess and furniture. Bedstead there is 
 none, the bedding being laid upon a ledge 
 of like material with the stone and plas- 
 ter walls. A valance hangs from it to 
 the floor. 
 
 The alcove is a darksome hole, even 
 now that modern prejudice has cut a win- 
 dow of fair size in the front wall of the 
 lowly room. All the daylight that made 
 its way to the eyes of the new-born baby 
 boy, one hundred and thirty-nine years 
 agone, stole in through an opening eight- 
 een inches deep, filled with four six-inch

 
 " Only a But an' a Ben " 21 
 
 panes of glass, set in a heavy sash. This 
 window looks out upon a grass-plot that 
 then formed a part of the " sma' croft " 
 tilled by " William Burns, Farmer," as he 
 is described upon the family grave in Al- 
 loway Kirkyard. 
 
 We gasp involuntarily as the civil cus- 
 todian tells the story of the solitary win- 
 dow, and points out that there was no 
 outer door to the " but." 
 
 Her consolatory remark, " There was 
 the light from the fireplace, of course," 
 helps us to reconstruct for ourselves a 
 scene with which she and other " improve- 
 ments " have nothing to do. 
 
 The faint blue reek pervading the room 
 from the low peat fire in the grate gives a 
 touch of local atmosphere essentially Scot- 
 tish. The fire burned more brightly on 
 that stormy January night of i 759. We 
 close our eyes and see the mother, weak 
 and thankful, in the shadowy recess, the 
 group of kindly gossips bustling about 
 her and the new-comer, and the proud 
 father receiving the congratulations of the 
 gypsy tramp, who predicted :
 
 2 2 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 " He '11 hae misfortunes great an' sma', 
 But ay a heart aboon them a', 
 He '11 be a credit to us a', 
 
 We '11 a' be proud o' Robin." 
 
 The deal dresser filled up, as now, all 
 the back of the room not occupied by win- 
 dow and bed-place. In the middle of the 
 floor was the table at which, we are told, 
 the father sat to read Shakespeare to his 
 family on winter nights, and about which 
 the household gathered for meals and 
 evening prayers. It is pushed against 
 the dresser to leave space for the passage 
 of tourist visitors. This oblong product 
 of country carpentry is scarred all over 
 with the names of those whose signatures, 
 
 " Like their faces. 
 Do much abound in public places " 
 
 that are consecrated ground to angels and 
 right-minded men. At the corner of the 
 ingle was the old spinning-wheel, now to 
 be seen in the other room, where it prob- 
 ably stood, still and silent, on the birth- 
 night. Elbow-room must have been as 
 rare a luxury as sofa and carpet in the
 
 " Only a But an' a Ben " 23 
 
 " but " (which was kitchen, bedroom, sit- 
 ting-room, and bedchamber all in one), 
 when the children's stools, the table, 
 wheel, and the parents' chairs were in 
 place. One of the latter, bound over and 
 about with cords, lest it should be sat 
 upon, backs up against the " set-in " bed. 
 One rapid sweep of fancy collects the 
 household, as in " The Cotter's Saturday 
 Night," a faithful portraiture of Burns's 
 own home-life. We group the elder 
 bairns and the "wee things," the "lisping 
 infant prattling on the father's knee," the 
 busy mother who 
 
 " Wi' her needle an' her shears, 
 Gars auld claes look amaist as weel 's new," 
 
 "the eldest hope, their Jenny, woman 
 grown," not forgetting the " strappan 
 youth," her lover — and wonder unto de- 
 spair how furniture and people got into 
 the room ; how the home party ate their 
 supper of " halesome parritch," milk, oat- 
 cake, and cheese, then knelt about the 
 " saint, the father and the husband," while 
 he prayed,
 
 24 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 " Where did the children sleep ? " is our 
 natural query. 
 
 " This was the only bedroom. The par- 
 lor was seldom used except upon grand 
 occasions, such as christenings, marriages, 
 funerals, and the like." 
 
 We listen and disbelieve. The civil 
 custodian was no more here on that Janu- 
 ary night than we were. We insist men- 
 tally and stubbornly upon transferring the 
 elder bairns, the wee toddlers, and lisping 
 infant, for the nonce, to the " ben," or 
 parlor. " A but an' a ben " was the con- 
 ventional thing in cottage architecture at 
 that date. This particular " ben " is an un- 
 interesting room, notwithstanding our 
 arbitrary plenishings of cots and pallets 
 for the " hantle " of juvenile Burnses. It 
 is separated from the " but " by a small 
 hall, about five feet square. Into this 
 the front door, set in the exact middle of 
 the house, opens. It is double-leaved, and 
 a wrought-iron hook, eighteen inches long, 
 made fast to the wall, when hasped, kept 
 one half of it shut, leaving the other free 
 for the coming and going of family and
 
 " Only a But an' a Ben " 25 
 
 friends. The house is flush with the vil- 
 lage street, and was formerly secured 
 against intruders by a latch, above which 
 a bit of wood was stuck at night so it could 
 not be lifted from without. 
 
 Like the "but," the "ben" had but one 
 window at the date of the overflow of 
 younglings which we have decided was 
 imperatively necessary on that stormy 
 birthnight. This one inlet of air and light 
 was in the streetward wall, and had six 
 panes, six inches long by four wide, in 
 each sash. 
 
 Yet the room was airy and cheerful by 
 comparison with the more important 
 "but." The practical, humane sister- 
 housewife cannot but hope that when 
 
 ** November chill blew loud wi' angry sigh," 
 
 the "thrifty wife " so far defied the Ayr- 
 shire Grundy as to take her needle, shears, 
 and making-over to this larger room to 
 spare her eyesight. 
 
 A round light-stand that belonged to 
 the Burnses is here, and half of one wall
 
 26 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 is covered by an old sign-board, defaced 
 by initial-cutting. A portrait of Burns, 
 rudely painted, and much the worse for 
 weather, adorns the board, which hung in 
 front of the cottage after it passed out of 
 the elder Burns's hands and became a 
 public-house. It was purchased by the 
 trustees of the Burns Monument several 
 years ago, and is kept in excellent repair. 
 The brown thatch of the roof is a foot 
 and a half thick, and beautifully laid and 
 trimmed. 
 
 The addition of two other rooms for 
 the storage of relics is in exact keeping 
 with the original building. Two chairs 
 from the Ayr public-house, lettered " Tam 
 o' Shanter" and " Souter Johnny," a tod- 
 dy-ladle used by Burns in Nance Tinnock's 
 house, a deal " leaf-table," and a brass 
 candlestick, once his property, are passed 
 hastily by as we catch a glimpse of a book 
 of his autograph letters and the original 
 manuscript of "Tam o' Shanter." Burns 
 wrote a strong, legible hand, not in the 
 least like the sprawling characters of the 
 average self-taught man. Two of the
 
 H H
 
 '* Only a But an' a Ben " 27 
 
 best-known lines of the famous poem are 
 usually printed and quoted thus : 
 
 " Or, like the snow-fall on the river, 
 One moment white, then gone forever." 
 
 An unexpurgated and careful Edin- 
 burgh edition has them, — 
 
 " Or, like the snow-falls on the river, 
 One moment white — then melts forever." 
 
 The peasant poet boldly uses " like " 
 as a synonym for "as" — a common pro- 
 vincialism in our Southern States and in 
 some parts of England at this day : 
 
 " Or, like the snow falls in the river. 
 One moment white — then melts forever." 
 
 The compound word " snow-falls " is a 
 modern alteration that improves neither 
 figure nor syntax. 
 
 " Only a but an' a ben ! " We say it 
 musingly, leaning over the railing on the 
 top of the inharmonious Grecian temple 
 erected to the memory of the ploughman 
 genius. 
 
 The lovely visible pastoral spread below 
 us, and as far as the eye can reach, is all
 
 28 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 " the Burns country." Thus it is set 
 down in guide-books ; thus the passionate 
 pilgrim from the Land of the Sunset 
 names it in exulting tenderness. These 
 are Robert Burns's hills, green to the 
 brows, and dotted with trees. The low- 
 lands, where cattle feed and men are 
 ploughing, and driving home loaded wains 
 to the rickyard, include the fields hal- 
 lowed by his toil. His ploughshare up- 
 rooted the daisy, and it was no longer a 
 weed ; in unearthing a field-mouse it 
 made the "wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous 
 beastie " pathetic and symbolic for all 
 time. The smell of peat in the sun-filled 
 air is as sweet to us for his sake as the 
 perfume of the hardy late roses growing 
 about the base of his monument ; the rip- 
 ple of the Doon filling up the silences 
 of the dreamy day is set to the music of 
 his verse. 
 
 His spirit does not haunt — it possesses 
 our willing souls in bonny, bonny Ayr- 
 shire. 
 
 Yet — only " a but an' a ben ! "
 
 Ill 
 
 "HER GLOOMY HONEYMOON" 
 
 29
 
 Ill 
 
 HER GLOOMY HONEYMOON" 
 
 IN the great Babylon of Hampton Court 
 Palace, builded by Thomas VVolsey — 
 butcher-boy, Cardinal, Premier, ruined and 
 disgraced favourite — there remains but one 
 authentic portrait of him. That one is a 
 quarter-length cabinet picture in an ill- 
 lighted closet, called by his name. 
 
 Henry the Eighth robbed his arrogant 
 vizier of his palace and altered it to suit 
 his own taste. The groined ceiling of 
 " Anne Boleyn's Gateway " is decorated 
 with true-lovers' knots binding together 
 the initials " H " and " A." The magnifi- 
 cent Great Hall was begun at the same 
 time. 
 
 " By dint of ye men workyng in theyr 
 houre tymes and drynking tymes for the 
 hastye expedicion of ye same, and ye emp- 
 31
 
 32 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 cion of tallow candles spent by ye workmen 
 in ye nyght-tymes," carvings, and illumi- 
 nated panels all ablaze with gold-leaf and 
 carmine, and matchless tapestries, brought 
 from the uttermost parts of the earth, that 
 even now glow with fadeless colours, were 
 finished before Jane Seymour's death at 
 Hampton Court. Her initials are inter- 
 twined with Henry's among the ornaments 
 of the ceilingr and in mosaics at the door 
 of the chapel in which he afterward married 
 Katharine Howard. 
 
 The large picture catalogued as " Henry 
 Vni. and his Family," that hangs in the 
 Queen's Audience-Chamber, was painted 
 by an artist of the Holbein school. The 
 King and his little son, who became Ed- 
 ward VI., occupy the centre of the picture. 
 Jane Seymour, who died at her boy's birth, 
 nevertheless appears seated at Henry's left 
 hand. Next to this posthumous portrait 
 stands the Princess Elizabeth. Opposite 
 to her, and at the King's right, is the 
 Princess Mary. 
 
 We look vainly among the hundreds of 
 portraits in the immense collection of the
 
 WOLSEY'S HALL, HAMPTON COURT.
 
 Her Gloomy Honeymoon 33 
 
 Royal Palace for any other likeness of 
 Mary Tudor, first Queen-regnant of Eng- 
 land and Ireland, who became, in the 
 fulness of time, the most sorrowful and 
 most unpopular sovereign who ever sat 
 upon the English throne. For the first 
 eleven years of her life she was the pre- 
 cocious and petted darling of parents and 
 people. After that, her story is made up 
 of variations of tragedy. Her father de- 
 clared her illegitimate and sought her life ; 
 her idolised mother died, begging, with 
 futile tears, for a last glimpse of her only 
 child ; Anne Boleyn's flouts and insults to 
 her worse than orphaned step-daughter 
 were like a weight about the step-mother's 
 neck when she came to the scaffold ; the 
 girl's dearest in heart and next of kin died 
 by the hand of the executioner for no 
 crime save their love and loyalty to her. 
 Her wild and lasting grief for her mother's 
 death undermined her health hopelessly. 
 She never knew another well day. Before 
 she came into the kingdom so hardly se- 
 cured for herself and her adherents, Mary 
 Tudor had known outrages that might well
 
 34 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 convert the saint she seemed to those who 
 knew her as Princess, into the incarnate 
 devil she is held to have been by the 
 Protestant world. 
 
 But to our portrait. It was painted 
 when she was about twenty-eight years of 
 age, and more than pleasing in appearance. 
 At eighteen, she was reckoned a beauty. 
 At thirty-eight, the Venetian ambassador 
 at her court wrote : 
 
 " Her face is well-formed, and her fea- 
 tures prove that when younger she was 
 more than moderately handsome. She 
 would now be so, saving some wrinkles, 
 caused more by sorrow than by age." 
 
 The pictured eyes into which we are 
 now looking are dark and lustrous ; her 
 complexion is pale, but pure. One writer 
 says it was "singularly beautiful. Until 
 the latest years of her heavily shadowed 
 life her blush was as quick and vivid as a 
 girl's." 
 
 In 1554, being then in the fortieth year 
 of her age, "she kept her gloomy honey- 
 moon at Hampton Court Palace," records 
 a biographer. The Duke of Norfolk, her
 
 Her Gloomy Honeymoon 35 
 
 staunch old friend and ally, "whom the 
 Queen loved entirely," died when she had 
 lieen married but a few days. The Court 
 went into mourning, and Mary, we may 
 well believe, not unwillingly, withdrew with 
 her young husband, Don Philip of Spain, 
 to the superb abode begun by Wolsey and 
 completed by her father. There is no 
 hner palace in all Great Britain. When 
 Mary, whose favourite seat it was, entered 
 it with such of her bridal train as she chose 
 to bring with her, it was like a dream of 
 Eastern magnificence. 
 
 A glance from the picture to the great 
 windows on the other side of the room 
 reveals gardens, avenues, and terraces that 
 then stretched away as far as the eye could 
 reach in every direction, except where they 
 were bounded by the silvery Thames. 
 Mary was a loving and a skilful horti- 
 culturist, and never happier than when 
 engaged among her flowers and orchards. 
 Music was a passion with her from in- 
 fancy, and she was no mean performer 
 upon " the virginals " and the harpsichord. 
 She was an accomplished scholar, and had
 
 36 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 in her girlhood pleased her fourth step- 
 mother, Katharine Parr, by translating the 
 Gospel of St. John from the Latin into Eng- 
 lish. Books, music, and such treasures of 
 art as were collected under no other roof in 
 all her kingdom, were here, subject to her 
 demand. The bridegroom, whom she had 
 " received right lovingly" upon his arrival 
 in England, had already established that 
 fell influence over her which was to prove 
 alike inexplicable to her apologists and to 
 her accusers. 
 
 A portrait of Philip of Spain in this same 
 Hampton Court gallery partially justifies 
 the infatuation of the bride, who was eleven 
 years his senior. It shows us a martial fig- 
 ure, a commanding presence, and a noble, 
 open countenance. If it were indeed taken 
 for him, it was egregiously flattered. Con- 
 temporaries and other portraits concur in 
 asserting that he was forbidding in face 
 and churlish in manner. " His complex- 
 ion was cane-coloured, his hair sandy and 
 scanty, his eyes small, blue, and weak, with 
 a gloomy expression of countenance," — 
 we hear from one. From another that he
 
 Her Gloomy Honeymoon Z7 
 
 was " a man of mean presence and carroty 
 complexion." The English people had 
 dreaded his alliance with their Queen with 
 aversion that seems to us like a premoni- 
 tion of the woes it would bring upon them. 
 Instead of seeking to conciliate them, as 
 Mary implored him to do, he ran counter 
 to their prejudices from the outset. While 
 they sympathised with the Queen in her 
 grief for her friend's death, they divined 
 shrewdly that her rigid retirement was 
 Philip's work, not hers, and were highly 
 incensed thereat. 
 
 " Since the Spanish wedlock, Hampton 
 Court gates that used to be open all day 
 long are closed, and every man must give 
 an account of his errand before entering," 
 is a complaint made during the gloomy 
 honeymoon. 
 
 Curiously enough, the only glimpse we 
 have at what went on within the locked 
 gates, is in the shape of a fast-day bill-of- 
 fare, in which salt fish, fresh sturgeon 
 caught in the Thames, crabs, and eels, are 
 succeeded by apples, oatmeal, and cream, 
 and these by cheese, wafers, and fruit as a
 
 38 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 dessert. One might fancy that bride and 
 groom were preparing themselves by fast- 
 ing and prayer for the crusade of blood 
 and fire inaugurated by Spanish rule. The 
 stipulation in the marriage contract that 
 Philip should " aid the Queen in govern- 
 ing her kingdoms," had been followed up 
 by instructions to her privy councillor, writ- 
 ten by her own hand, to " tell the King the 
 whole state of the realm, and to obey his 
 commandment in all things." 
 
 Behind, and at the right of the gentle- 
 faced Princess in the picture before us, is 
 the uncouth figure of "Jane the Fool," 
 who had been attached to Mary's person 
 and followed her journeyings for years, as 
 privileged jester and chamberwoman. Jane 
 married a servant in the household of the 
 Princess Elizabeth before Mary's corona- 
 tion and marriage. Had she been in at- 
 tendance during the Hampton Court se- 
 clusion, she might have told her royal 
 mistress some stinging and salutary truths ; 
 even proposed, after the manner of kings' 
 jesters, to exchange titles with her. 
 
 With all the acres of tapestries and paint-
 
 Her Gloomy Honeymoon 39 
 
 ings within-doors, and the enchanting miles 
 of woods and water and pleasure-grounds 
 without, in which he might roam unseen 
 and undisturbed, Philip was desperately 
 ennuyd before the gloomy honeymoon was 
 over. Oh the other hand, his mature bride, 
 so long and so sadly lonely in heart, be- 
 came the more madly enamoured of the 
 only being she had had the right to claim 
 as her own since her mother died. 
 
 The best authorities upon historical 
 dates now agree that the reconciliation of 
 the estranged sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, 
 took place in the second month of Mary's 
 nominal mournino; for Norfolk and real en- 
 joyment of the society of her ungracious 
 husband. The meeting was in Mary's 
 bedchamber, A stormy dialogue con- 
 cluded with a kiss and the gift from the 
 Queen of a costly ring. Gossiping tradi- 
 tion will have it that Philip wrought upon 
 his wife to recall her sister, and that he 
 was concealed, with Mary's knowledge, 
 behind the arras during the interview, that 
 she might be strictly obedient to his in- 
 structions.
 
 40 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 We find the Queen again at Hampton 
 Court in April, 1555, when "the King's 
 Grace " — he was that to the terrified na- 
 tion from the hour he emerged from the 
 gloomy seclusion of his honeymoon — *' re- 
 moved the Queen to Hampton Court to 
 keep Easter and to take her chamber 
 there." The phrase had reference to the 
 Court etiquette that required the sov- 
 ereign to keep her room for a month be- 
 fore the birth of a child. 
 
 Tennyson puts a Magnificat into Mary's 
 mouth with the beginning of the illusive 
 hope to which she was to cling until her 
 forlorn case became the laughing-stock of 
 the nations. 
 
 " O Philip, husband ! now thy love to mine 
 
 Will cling more close, and these bleak manners 
 
 thaw, 
 That make me shamed and tongue-tied in my 
 
 love ! — " 
 
 is an apostrophe that is hardly a poetical 
 licence. 
 
 Her lonof silence and absence from 
 public life were at length explained by a
 
 Her Gloomy Honeymoon 41 
 
 despatch to the French King from a plain- 
 spoken ambassador : 
 
 " The Queen's state is by no means of 
 the hopeful kind generally supposed, but 
 rather some woful malady, for she sits 
 whole days on the ground, crouched to- 
 gether, with her knees higher than her 
 head." 
 
 Fox corroborates this in his history of 
 the martyrs of this blood-soaked reign : 
 
 " Sometimes she laid weeks without 
 speaking, as one dead, and more than 
 once the rumour went that she had died." 
 
 Another pitying chronicler alludes to 
 her as "the half-dead Queen," while de- 
 picting the horrible cruelties perpetrated 
 by Philip and his lieutenant, Gardiner, be- 
 fore the breath at last forsook her dropsi- 
 cal body. 
 
 I" 1557' Philip returned from a long 
 visit to Spain to fan the sinking flames of 
 persecution and to drag the invalid from her 
 bed into the light as evidence that he had 
 her warrant for all that he did. His object 
 gained, he sailed again for his native land, 
 leavinor her to bear the onus of his deeds.
 
 42 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 It was after this second departure that, 
 convinced that he had deserted her, the 
 tormented creature, old before her time, 
 despised as well as abandoned, in a par- 
 oxysm of despair, cut his portrait from 
 the frame and trampled it under her feet. 
 
 She was brought upon a litter to Hamp- 
 ton Court — " the which she ever loved 
 the most of all her abodes " — in Septem- 
 ber, 1558, "but grew the worse, rather 
 than better," as was to be expected, — 
 haunted as palace and gardens must have 
 been by ghosts from the irrevocable Past. 
 
 She died in St. James's Palace, Novem- 
 ber 17th of the same year. " It was the 
 custom for the body of an English sov- 
 ereign to be buried in royal array, but 
 Mary had earnestly entreated that no 
 semblance of the crown which had pressed 
 so heavily on her brow in life might cum- 
 ber her corpse in death. She requested 
 that she might be interred as a poor 
 religieiiser '■ 
 
 It is hard to breathe in all the glory and 
 spaciousness of the state rooms, while we 
 review the dreary, dreary tale. At the
 
 Her Gloomy Honeymoon 43 
 
 upper end of the Great Hall, where Henry 
 VI H. danced with Jane Seymour and 
 Katharine Howard, and where Katharine 
 Parr was proclaimed Queen, is a dais or 
 platform, upon which Shakespeare and 
 his company played in Elizabeth's time. 
 Other and less august shades people it for 
 us as we stroll pensively from one tapes- 
 tried wall to the other, and picture to our- 
 selves how the Hall must look when 
 closed for the night and but faintly illu- 
 minated by the moonbeams struggling 
 through the stained glass of the tall win- 
 dows. An archway opening from the 
 great staircase to the Queen's apartments, 
 in what a historian calls " the mysterious 
 angle of Hampton Court," was built up 
 two centuries and more ago, for no other 
 reason, said superstitious gossips, than to 
 impede the wanderings of Jane Seymour, 
 who used to roam the galleries and flit up 
 and down the staircase, a lighted candle 
 in her hand. We have been told, to-day, 
 in our round of the palace, that she has 
 been seen here within a dozen years. 
 Katharine Howard, when arrested in her
 
 44 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 own apartments at Hampton Court, and 
 told that she was to be taken to the Tower, 
 ran shrieking through the corridors, hair 
 dishevelled and dress disordered, to the 
 closed door of the chapel, where she knew 
 Henry was then praying, and beat upon 
 the panels with her hands, calling wildly 
 upon her husband's name. She was torn 
 away, and borne to her death, — " albeit 
 she struggled violently, and her screams 
 were heard by everyone in the chapel." 
 Since which time she has haunted the 
 corridor — a distraught phantom with 
 streaming hair, who cries frantically to 
 her royal lord for pardon and help. The 
 nurse of Edward VI. turns an invisible 
 spinning-wheel and mutters to herself in 
 the room once occupied by her. 
 
 If foul wrongs done to a woman while 
 she lived, and merciless judgment meted 
 out to her when dead, could recall the de- 
 parted. Great Hall and bedchamber and 
 closet would be revisited daily and nightly 
 by the sad wraith of her whose brief reign 
 is like the stamp of a bloody hand upon 
 the page of English history bearing date
 
 Her Gloomy Honeymoon 45 
 
 of 1 553-1 558. Calm reason may not 
 plead for Mary Tudor, but our hearts are 
 sore with pity as we make hers the central 
 figure upon our stage ; first, as the sweet- 
 faced translator of the Evangel of Love, 
 petite in form, exquisite in complexion, 
 " both wise and sage, and beautiful in 
 favour " ; then, the slighted wife, bereft 
 alike of the dream of motherhood and a 
 husband's love, — finally, broken in spirit 
 and in health, " hated by her husband as 
 hated by her people " ; grovelling, like a 
 dying animal, upon the ground for days 
 together, dumbly awaiting welcome death 
 in the lordly rooms where she had spent 
 her prophetic honeymoon.
 
 IV 
 
 **AN EATING-HOUSE FOR 
 GOODLY FARE" 
 
 47
 
 IV 
 
 "AN EATING-HOUSE FOR 
 GOODLY FARE" 
 
 JUST as it was two hundred years 
 ago, do you say ? " 
 
 " It was old in 1725. A handbook of 
 London pubHshed at that date catalogues 
 it as Ye Okie Cheshire Cheese Taver7i, 7iear 
 ye Flete Prison, an Eating-House for goodly 
 fare. You see it now just as it was then. 
 That is Dr. Samuel Johnson's corner over 
 there. Goldsmith sat at his left hand. 
 Goldsmith's lodgings were just across the 
 street. He wrote the Vicar of Wakefield 
 in them. I '11 show you his grave in the 
 Temple Churchyard, when we go out. 
 That is, unless I can persuade you to stay 
 here to luncheon. It will be something to 
 remember, I assure you." 
 
 The intonation is persuasive and a little 
 
 49
 
 50 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 anxious. The speaker casts a deprecating 
 smile at the trio of fashionably attired 
 women he is escorting. The one directly 
 addressed gathers up her black satin skirt 
 from the sawdusty floor, includes the ap- 
 pointments and inmates of the room in 
 one sweeping, shuddering glance, and says 
 hastily, — " O 7io ! thank you ever so much, 
 but I really could n't tJmik of it ! " 
 
 Nobody, excepting ourselves, looks at 
 the party that has the effect of taking up 
 all the spare room in the place, and mak- 
 ing the ceiling lower, the wainscoted walls 
 more dingy, in a way peculiar to over- 
 dressed Americans. The cicerone is their 
 countryman, but of a different stamp. 
 There is intellio^ent reo^ret in his backward 
 glance as he follows the disdainful bevy 
 in their retreat. We get a glimpse of 
 them through a window, when they emerge 
 from the shabby doorway. They are still 
 gathering their skirts about them, and pick 
 their way gingerly upon their boot-tips 
 over the wet stones of Wine Court. 
 
 So far as we can see, the flutter and 
 bustle produced by their hurried round of
 
 1?>^'.- '^ '1 
 
 
 
 
 ENTRANCE TO THE " OLD CHESHIRE CHEESE" IN WINE OFFICE COURT, 
 f'rom an Original Drawing by Herbert Railton.
 
 An Eating-House 51 
 
 inspection is confined to ourselves, al- 
 though every word uttered was audible 
 from wall to wall. The ruffled stillness 
 subsides with their departure, as stagnant 
 waters regain placidity after the plashing 
 of a stone. We exchange congratulatory 
 smiles and snuggle down contentedly in 
 our nook across the aisle from the John- 
 sonian corner. Then, the encompassing 
 atmosphere begins to take effect. We 
 grow dreamily reminiscent, patiently an- 
 ticipative. 
 
 This expedition to the one coffee- 
 house in London that has withstood the 
 surge of "modern improvements" direct- 
 ed against building and management for 
 more than two hundred years, is the 
 "larkiest" thing we have done in our 
 wanderings. Before coming, it looked to 
 us like a bit of Bohemian adventure verg- 
 ing upon the poisonous sweetness of stolen 
 waters, the touch of iniquity which, the 
 witty Frenchwoman said, was all that was 
 needed to make her vanilla ice perfectly 
 delicious. We foresaw a fair measure of 
 novel excitement, with a certain back-
 
 52 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 ground of discomfort. As the spirit of 
 the place and the times gains possession 
 of us, the " lark " becomes more than deco- 
 rous. It is dignified, and a duty we owe 
 to the manes of the greater than ourselves 
 who resorted hither in the dim and rever- 
 end Past. 
 
 The coffee-house — or chop-house — is 
 smaller than we expected to find it. There 
 is a bar on the other side of the hall, with 
 a sustained reputation of its very own, 
 and the supper-rooms above-stairs could 
 tell gay tales of dead-and-gone revelries, 
 if the dumb walls were phonographic. 
 This, the chief resort of customers that 
 have given " The Cheshire Cheese " world- 
 wide renown, is not more than twenty feet 
 long and perhaps fifteen feet in width. 
 There are ten tables, each with seats for 
 six upon hard benches that are made fast 
 to the floor. Breast-high partitions be- 
 tween the tables make compartments like 
 the square family pews seen in old churches. 
 Massive oaken beams, embrowned by 
 smoke and centuries, cross the ceiling. 
 One compartment is further secluded by
 
 An Eating-House 53 
 
 a dingy curtain, hung from a rod set a 
 foot or more above the top of the board 
 partition, and is known as "the cosey 
 corner." 
 
 Dr. Johnson's nook has wall-benches 
 on two sides ; a third side is made by the 
 projecting chimney, the table filling the 
 fourth that faces the room. Johnson's 
 portrait hangs above his bench. A brass 
 plate is let into the wall, testifying that 
 this was " the favourite seat of Dr. Sam- 
 uel Johnson, Born September 18, lyog. 
 Died December ij, ij8^.'' Beneath a 
 pompous, eulogistic sentence we read one 
 more pithy and interesting : 
 
 " No, sir ! there is nothing which has 
 yet been contrived by man, by which so 
 much happiness has been produced, as by 
 a good tavern." — Johnson. 
 
 The round spots of darker brown upon 
 the wainscot were made, it is said, by 
 the loll of Johnson's greasy wig and the 
 restless rubbing of Goldsmith's head, as 
 they hobnobbed daily over roast, steak, 
 and home-brewed ale. The sawdust on 
 the floor is an indifferent substitute for
 
 54 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 the sand that formerly coated and pro- 
 tected it. Midway between door and 
 chimney is an iron umbrella-rack, the box- 
 bottom of which is filled with sawdust. 
 It has especial fascination for us, some- 
 how. Johnson's umbrella, that must have 
 been big and baggy, and Goldsmith's, 
 that, most likely, had a broken rib and a 
 slit or two (if he owned one at all), leaned 
 against that frame times without number. 
 We easily conjure up the bear-like roll 
 and ponderous tread of the great lexi- 
 cographer up the aisle, until he flings 
 himself upon the creaking bench, poor 
 Oliver following with his dog-trot and his 
 bright, wistful eyes. We hope and be- 
 lieve that, when he had not what " Young 
 America" calls "the price of a dinner" 
 in his pocket, he dined at Bruin's ex- 
 pense. 
 
 Charles II. consistently defied the pro- 
 prieties and amused his royal self by 
 bringing Nell Gwynne here to sup one 
 night after the play. Discarding as apoc- 
 ryphal the tale that Shakespeare used to 
 take his chop and cup of sack at one of
 
 An Eating-House 55 
 
 these tables while his plays were "on" at 
 the Blackfriars Theatre, we yet remind 
 one another, whisperingly, that Robert 
 Herrick wrote to Ben Jonson of 
 
 " these lyric feasts 
 Made at The Sun, 
 The Cheese, the Triple Tun " ; 
 
 that "the marvellous Boy," Chatterton, 
 loafed into the classic precincts to warm 
 his famishing body, and to bask his 
 hungrier soul and heart in the blaze of 
 the congregated wits. Alexander Pope, 
 Alfred Tennyson, David Garrick, John 
 Leech, Thomas Hood, Charles Dickens, 
 Edmund Burke, Thackeray, Voltaire, 
 Christopher North, Charles Matthews, 
 Douglas Jerrold, John Forster, Nathan- 
 iel Hawthorne, Sir Joshua Reynolds, — 
 what care we how we violate synchro- 
 nisms in our breathless enumeration of 
 a few of the shining host that have sat 
 upon these hard benches, eaten from 
 these clumsy tables, and made the smoke- 
 dyed rafters ring with debate and laugh- 
 ter ? Epigrams were born in the old
 
 56 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 eating-house as butterflies are evolved 
 from cocoons by sunshine and summer 
 airs. A catalogue of the noted bons viots 
 here uttered for the first time would fill a 
 fair-sized volume. 
 
 We have abundant leisure for memory 
 and for thought, for, mistaking the hour 
 at which The Pudding, the event of the 
 day, would be served, we have forty-five 
 minutes upon our hands. The waiter 
 who spreads our white cloth and sets in 
 array the willow-pattern plates, the cas- 
 ter, salt-cellars, cutlery, and pewter tank- 
 ards, informs us in the husky sub-tone that 
 befits hour and scene, that " It will not be 
 down until 'arf-parst one, to the minnit." 
 
 "The kitchen is upstairs, then ?" 
 
 "As it halways 'as been, sir. And it 
 'as been done to a turn at 'arf-past one 
 o'clock to the minnit for a 'undred years 
 and more." 
 
 As the minutes pass, the room fills. 
 No questions are asked ; no orders are 
 given. For a while, the hum of voices 
 from the bar trickles into the silence. 
 This is hushed presently, and the five or
 
 '■■^ A^iigS^ 
 
 STAIRCASE IN OLD CHESHIRE CHEESE." 
 From an Original Drawing by Herbert Railton.
 
 An Eating-House 57 
 
 six men who have loitered there enter 
 with the careful step of church-comers to 
 take the few remaining vacant seats. 
 Watches are furtively consulted when the 
 minutes have dwindled into seconds. Still 
 there is no exhibition of restlessness. Ver- 
 ily, these English know how to wait for 
 what they are sure of getting. In the hun- 
 dred-years-and-more they have learned that 
 IT is not to be hurried. 
 
 Four waiters appear, laden with im- 
 mense piles of hot plates of generous 
 amplitude, and deposit them upon a table 
 near the door. Two respectable and 
 ruddy Britons in the box adjoining ours 
 take off the hats they had not thought it 
 worth while to remove out of respect to 
 their fellow-guests. Upon the heels of 
 the plate-bearers march two men with four 
 covered tureens of gravy. These flank 
 the hot plates, leaving the upper end of 
 the board clear. Then, a man walks in 
 quietly and takes his stand before the 
 vacant space. From his dress-coat he 
 might be a Chief Butler. From his hand- 
 some face, clean-shaven but for a mus-
 
 58 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 tache, he might be an educated gentle- 
 man. His deportment is that of a High 
 Priest, and the table is his altar. An 
 attendant hands him a glittering knife and 
 a fork. 
 
 Our fingers and toes tingle ; electric 
 shivers play up and down our spines in 
 the interval of perhaps thirty seconds that 
 elapses before there looms up in the door- 
 way a big waiter, bearing aloft upon a 
 pair of muscular arms — 
 
 THE PUDDING. 
 
 He moves with judicious circumspec- 
 tion. We recall, with a pang as swift 
 and keen as a jumping toothache, that 
 once — a generation or so ago — a hapless 
 predecessor of the Hercules tripped upon 
 the threshold in the supreme moment of 
 the Occasion, and let the Pudding fall. 
 
 It is safe to-day, albeit the table actually 
 groans as it is set down. The gleaming 
 carver is raised — not with a flourish, as it 
 might be in the hands of a meaner artist 
 — and sinks into the full bosom, swelling 
 above the rim of the mammoth basin. Slow
 
 An Eating-House 59 
 
 clouds of incense rise and soon pervade 
 the remotest corners. The phlegmatic 
 Britons about us do not turn a hair. Yet 
 their mouths must be watering- behind 
 their clenched teeth. Distribution, like 
 carving, is regulated by immutable rules. 
 Each expectant must take his turn. 
 Every plate is heaped, yet the only ac- 
 companiment of the Pudding is great 
 potatoes, smoking hot, that crumble into 
 meal at a touch. 
 
 If there can be two supreme moments 
 in the gastronomic Function at which we 
 are assisting, the second is that in which 
 we taste, for the first time, the Dish, the 
 fame of which has followed the British 
 drum-beat around the world. 
 
 It signifies next to nothing to say that 
 the crust, three inches thick, is as light as 
 a sponge and as tender as the heart of a 
 newly made widower ; that beneath this 
 crust — embalmed in, and informed by, a 
 brown gravy of ineffable and indescribable 
 spiciness and savouriness, and as rich and 
 smooth as Alderney cream — are cubes of 
 juicy beefsteak and minute morsels of
 
 6o Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 marrow, larks, mushrooms, kidneys, and 
 oysters, each, by some miracle of culinary 
 genius, retaining its distinctive flavour, yet 
 entering into and facilitating the accom- 
 plishment of a harmonious Whole. 
 
 Having satisfied ourselves as to these 
 particulars by critical analysis, after the 
 ecstasy of fruition is somewhat dulled by 
 indulgence, we are as far as ever from 
 grasping the mystery of proportion and 
 concoction. 
 
 Custom, audited by common sense, 
 ordains that the pudding be washed 
 down by " a pint of bitter." Which, being 
 interpreted, is the mildest and mellowest 
 of " brown October ale." It has consorted 
 with the savoury Wonder for so long that 
 divorce would be an outrage. 
 
 "Stewed Cheshire" is the one and only 
 other course prescribed by tradition and 
 appetite when the second — or, mayhap, 
 the third — help of pudding has been de- 
 clined — or, what is more likely, eaten. 
 " Stewed Cheshire " is a kind of glorified 
 Welsh rarebit, served in the square, shal- 
 low tins in which it is cooked, and gar-
 
 An Eating-IIouse 6i 
 
 nished with sippets of delicately coloured 
 toast. 
 
 On the way out, we halt at the altar. 
 The still steaming basin is three-quarters 
 empty. In case some abnormally capacious 
 customer should accept a fourth portion, 
 the High Priest still holds the knife, but 
 lightly, and resting, as it were, upon his 
 arms. Rashly, being ignorant of his real 
 rank, we accost him civilly, extol the Pud- 
 ding, and inquire further into the antece- 
 dents thereof. He is courteous, and, for 
 a High Priest, communicative. 
 
 The basin, or bowl, in which the pudding 
 is cooked, stands eighteen inches high, 
 and is twenty inches in diameter at the 
 brim. It holds one hundred pounds of 
 mixture, including the crust, and is boiled 
 twenty hours. The recipe is a state se- 
 cret, and the landlord keeps the formula 
 in his safe when not using it. The Pud- 
 ding is compounded in a locked room, 
 then committed for boiling to a confiden- 
 tial cook. 
 
 " The Cheese," as the ancient hostelry 
 is familiarly termed by affectionate habit-
 
 62 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 u^s, has been in the Moore family for 
 several generations, descending, like a 
 dukedom, from father to son. This we 
 had heard prior to our visit. Not until 
 we were quitting the storied spot did we 
 discover that the suave High Functionary 
 with whom we had been talkinof was Mr. 
 Charles Moore, the present proprietor. 
 He is a Churchwarden and a Common 
 Councilman, with prospects of the Lord 
 Mayoralty, should he care to have the 
 office, a man of rare intelligence and 
 culture. 
 
 The venerable eating-house has been a 
 mine of wealth to his canny forbears and 
 to himself. In nothing have they proved 
 themselves more canny than in resisting 
 what their revered Johnson anathematised 
 as " the fury of innovation " that has trans- 
 formed other chop-houses, The Mitre, The 
 Dog, The Tun, and The Cock, — " most an- 
 cient of Taverns," — into nineteenth-cen- 
 tury restaurants, bereft of quaintness and 
 tradition by new methods and new men, 
 and has substituted cheap replicas for a 
 Unique.
 
 V 
 NO. 24 CHEYNE ROW 
 
 63
 
 V 
 
 NO. 24 CHEYNE ROW 
 
 WE have asked to see the kitchen, 
 first of all. 
 
 For the thought of Jane Welsh Carlyle, 
 more than the fame of her husband, has 
 brought us to No. 24 — formerly No. 5 — 
 Cheyne Row {Anglicd, " Chain-ie "). 
 
 The kitchen is in what the English call 
 " a sunken basement," with two half-win- 
 dows opening across an area upon the 
 street. A heavy deal table is in the mid- 
 dle of the floor. The dresser is the same 
 in which Jane Welsh arranged her crock- 
 ery with the help of Bessy Barnet, her one 
 maid-servant, in the leafy month of June, 
 
 1834. 
 
 Bessy Barnet washed dishes in the an- 
 cient sink in the corner by the pump. 
 Jane was sharp with a kitchen-maid, thirty 
 
 05
 
 66 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 years later, for letting the pump-well go 
 " irrecoverably dry," though how the ca- 
 tastrophe could have been averted is an 
 English enigma to us. The notable 
 housekeeper must have had unrecorded 
 battles with dough and circumstance over 
 the ugly table and the sulky-looking sink 
 in the days when she " got up at half-past 
 seven to prepare the coffee and bacon-ham 
 for breakfast," after which meal she swept 
 the parlour and blackened the grate before 
 making her own bed. The kitchen — she 
 named it " an inferno " — could never have 
 been cheerful, even on bright days. In 
 foggy weather the inmates must have 
 been obliged to work by lamplight. 
 
 The vision of the trig figure stepping 
 briskly from table to range and dresser is 
 suddenly struck from the imagination by 
 something the custodian is saying : 
 
 " He used to smoke in the kitchen every 
 night. His chair stood here" — designating 
 a spot at the right of the hearth. " Ten- 
 nyson was often here and smoked with 
 him. He sat at the opposite side of the 
 fire. You may have heard of the time
 
 No. 24 Cheyne Row 67 
 
 when they smoked for two hours one night 
 and neither of them spoke a word. When 
 Tennyson got up to go home, Carlyle said, 
 — ' Coom again, soon, Alfred. We 've had 
 an awfully graund evening together.' " 
 
 " Would n't Mrs. Carlyle allow them to 
 smoke upstairs ? " 
 
 " I don't know about that. But Carlyle 
 liked to sit over the kitchen fire with his 
 pipe. He said he felt more at home here 
 than anywhere else." 
 
 As was but natural in the son of a Scot- 
 tish peasant. 
 
 The picture of the dainty mistress of 
 the home — a lady born and bred, who 
 married the eccentric plebeian against 
 the advice of her friends, and, believing 
 in him, "worked like a servant, bore 
 poverty and suffering and put up with 
 his humours, which were extremely trying " 
 — comes to the front again with this reply. 
 We have our doubts and our beliefs, 
 based upon what we know of her house- 
 wifery and her husband's habits. 
 
 "In about a week, it seems to me, all 
 was swept and garnished, fairly habitable.
 
 68 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 and continued incessantly to get itself 
 polished, civilised and beautiful to a 
 degree that surprised me," wrote Carlyle 
 of this epoch. He was effusively just to 
 her — when she had passed beyond the 
 reach of human praise or blame. 
 
 Doubt has hardened into belief by the 
 time we mount the narrow kitchen stairs 
 to what was, for twenty years, the Car- 
 lyles' " parlour." Here they sat and 
 talked, and quarrelled, and made up, and 
 lived what part of their lives was com- 
 mon to the two. Mrs. Carlyle called it, 
 in rural phrase, her " best room." Fold- 
 ing-doors connect it with the smaller 
 room in which they took their meals. 
 
 "The little oval clock" (now a fixture 
 on the wall above the staircase leading 
 to the upper floor) " is on his bracket 
 in the back-room, with the dining-room 
 oval table," Carlyle writes to his brother. 
 ** It is here we sit in dewy morning sun- 
 shine, and breakfast on hot coffee and 
 the best of bread-and-butter." 
 
 Back of the dining-room is "a china- 
 room, or pantry, or I know not what,"
 
 No. 24 Cheyne Row 69 
 
 says another letter — "all shelved and fit 
 to hold crockery for the whole street." 
 
 Such passages as these had prepared 
 us to look for something semi-palatial 
 in the House the proud lessee spells, 
 always, with a capital H. There is a 
 touch of pathos in the raptures of the 
 new tenants over their abode, since it is 
 an unconscious revelation of the bare 
 simplicity of their former home-living. 
 
 "The House is eminent, antique, wain- 
 scoted to the very ceiling ; broadish stair 
 with massive balustrade, corniced, and as 
 thick as one's thigh," is one of the hus- 
 band's florid periods. The more practical 
 wife is almost as enthusiastic : 
 
 "The house is a massive concern, an 
 excellent lodgement of most antique phys- 
 iognomy, all wainscoted, carved and 
 queer-looking, roomy, substantial, com- 
 modious, with closets to satisfy any Blue- 
 beard." 
 
 To our eyes, the ci-devant " No. 5 " is 
 a very ordinary affair — a commonplace 
 tenement in a middle-class Row ; moderate 
 in size and plain in finish, with nothing
 
 70 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 to commend it to our notice except the 
 fact that for two-and-thirty years it housed 
 a Genius, and was kept by his much- 
 enduring wife. 
 
 By-and-by, as fame increased, and the 
 family purse was heavier, important 
 changes were made in the room above 
 the humble "parlour." Up to now it 
 had been Carlyle's study. The French 
 Revolution^ Cromwell, Latter-Day Tracts^ 
 and many of his lectures were written 
 here. In 1852 was begun the work 
 of " an enlargement of it into a kind 
 of Drawing-room according to modern 
 ideas," as Carlyle put it. Jane meant 
 it for a library, where he could continue 
 to write, yet where visitors might be 
 received in a style somewhat suitable 
 to their rising fortunes. 
 
 But the nest was stirred. The " excel- 
 lent, large, wholesome apartment, in size 
 19 by 18 feet," in which, Carlyle tells 
 his brother, he is trying to work, was 
 soon condemned as untenantable. Much 
 humouring of his moods and tenses had 
 made him more " notional " than ever.
 
 No. 24 Cheyne Row 71 
 
 " For three days his satisfaction over 
 the rehabilitated house lasted ; on the 
 fourth the young lady next door took a 
 fit of practising upon her accursed piano- 
 forte, and he started up, disenchanted, 
 in his new library and informed heaven 
 and earth in a peremptory manner that 
 there he could neither think nor live, 
 that the carpenter must be brought back, 
 and steps taken to make him a quiet place 
 anywhere — perhaps, best of all, on the 
 roof of the house." 
 
 The volcanic upheaval gave Jane the 
 long -sighed -for drawing-room. There 
 were portraits upon the walls, presented 
 by noble friends, Albert Diirer engrav- 
 ings, and rare prints ; two pier-glasses 
 were between the windows, and a square 
 mirror was over the mantel. Sofas and 
 chairs were grouped with tables and piano ; 
 a Bramah grate was set in blue tiles ; burn- 
 ers superseded lamps, and gold-plated 
 candlesticks, silver and green lacquered 
 bronze statuettes, made a show that ex- 
 cited the envy of plainer neighbours, Mrs. 
 Carlyle was "justly proud of the room,"
 
 72 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 says a chronicler. She had not a tithe of 
 the genuine comfort in it she had known 
 in the old-fashioned "parlour" on the 
 ground-floor. 
 
 A picture painted by Robert Tait for 
 Lord Ashburton shows the Carlyles at 
 home in this, the " best room " of their 
 earlier days. Carlyle, in his plaided dress- 
 ing-gown, pipe in hand, one of his great 
 feet crossed at the ankle over the other, 
 leans against the corner of the mantel. 
 Jane sits in an arm-chair on the other end 
 of the rug, serene and matronly, her chin 
 supported by her hand. The round table 
 is strewed with books and papers ; through 
 the wide foldino-.doors we see the dinincr- 
 room, the floor of which, like that of the 
 " parlour," is covered with the carpet from 
 the Craigenputtock drawing-room, " sup- 
 plemented by a border." The cage of 
 " Chico," the wonderful canary, is on a 
 stand near the open door of the china- 
 room. Nero, Mrs. Carlyle's pet dog, the 
 " infatuated little beast " who took kindly 
 to Carlyle, lies, fat and fluffy, upon a sofa. 
 
 All for comfort, and nothing too fine
 
 No. 24 Cheyne Row ^i 
 
 for daily use — is the story told by the 
 apartment where the piquante, shrewd, 
 busy, and usually sunny-faced, wee host- 
 ess received her husband's friends as her 
 own. Leigh Hunt, who lived just around 
 the corner, dropped in every evening, 
 " always rather scrupulously, though most 
 simply and modestly dressed." A " Kind 
 of Talking Nightingale," Mrs. Carlyle 
 called him. She played Scotch tunes on the 
 piano for him, and they read Burns to- 
 gether ; then she listened to his singing and 
 playing until the supper of oatmeal-por- 
 ridge was served. He always took a tiny 
 bowl of it, and, after sugaring it, sipped it 
 from a tea-spoon delicately, in bird-like 
 fashion. His wife borrowed daily and 
 hourly from Mrs. Carlyle's kitchen, — tum- 
 blers, tea-cups, a spoonful of tea, a cupful 
 of meal, — " not having a copper in her 
 purse." 
 
 Thither came John Stuart Mill, and 
 Mazzini, with Count Pepoli and other 
 refugees, and John and Anthony Sterling, 
 and Froude and Forster, and dozens of 
 other uotabt'lm, to admire Carlyle and to
 
 74 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 fall in love, straightway, with his wife, as 
 she sat a queen among " her dainty bits 
 of arrangement, ornamentations, all so 
 frugal, simple, full of grace, propriety and 
 ingenuity, as they ever were." Between 
 this and the dining-room stood the four- 
 leaved screen, five feet high, that kept her 
 busy for many weeks, "pasting it all over 
 with prints." 
 
 ** It will be a charming work of art when 
 finished," she says, merrily. 
 
 Carlyle's post-mortem foot-note is, — 
 " Stands here to this day, the beautifullest 
 and cleverest screen I have ever seen. 
 How strange, how mournfully affecting to 
 me, now ! " 
 
 Especially how " strange " ! The 
 chances are that he never gave it a glance 
 while she lived. 
 
 Edward Irving — her early lover and, 
 according to some, her love, as well — saw 
 her in this room, one month before his 
 death, and a smile lit up his wan eyes as 
 he said, — " You are an Eve, making a lit- 
 tle Paradise wherever you are." 
 
 Ah me ! the miofht-have-beensthat stare
 
 No. 24 Cheyne Row 75 
 
 and gape upon us in this crooked, every- 
 day world of ours ! 
 
 We like best — and most nearly love — 
 Jane Welsh Carlyle here, and find it in 
 our housewifely hearts to forgive her for 
 letting her lumbering Craigenputtock boor 
 smoke his black pipe and incubate his 
 sublime and sullen fancies, for two immor- 
 tal hours, before the kitchen fire. 
 
 In all those early years she was a brave 
 little hypocrite, deluding herself with 
 others, jotting down pleasant and pious fic- 
 tions for her old mother-in-law, of her con- 
 tentment with her matrimonial " bargain." 
 
 " I could wish him a little less yellow, 
 and a little more peaceable — but that is 
 all," she affirms within a year after their 
 removal to the Cheyne Row Paradise. 
 She usually meant what she said at the 
 time, and meant some things too strenu- 
 ously for her own happiness and her hus- 
 band's comfort. 
 
 It is idle to attempt disguise of the truth 
 that she changed her mind and her feel- 
 ings materially with the passage of years, 
 and the widening of her world.
 
 76 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 " The most intimate friend she had in 
 the world " makes no pretences of this 
 sort in commenting upon what was out- 
 wardly the most prosperous period of the 
 badly joined lives : 
 
 " She was miserable at this time ; more 
 abidingly and intensely miserable than 
 words can utter. . . . Mr. Carlyle once said 
 to me that she ' had the deepest and ten- 
 derest feelings, but narrow.' Any other 
 wife would have laughed at his bewitch- 
 ment with Lady Ashburton, but to her 
 there was a complicated aggravation that 
 made it hard to endure. She was mak- 
 ing daily, hourly endeavours that his life 
 should be as free from hindrances as pos- 
 sible. He put her aside for his work, but 
 lingered in the * Primrose path of dalli- 
 ance ' for the sake of a great lady who 
 liked to have a philosopher in chains. Bear 
 in mind that her life was solitary — no ten- 
 derness, no caresses, no loving words ; 
 nothing out of which one's heart can make 
 the wine of life. A glacier on a mountain 
 would have been as human a companion- 
 ship."
 
 No. 24 Cheyne Row 11 
 
 " My Man-of-Genius-Husband," Jeannie 
 calls the glacier, sportively, with a dash of 
 bitterness in sparkle and foam. At this 
 time she began the journal the Man-of- 
 Genius's worshippers blame Mr. Froude 
 for publishing. What would you have ? 
 Misery cannot be forever silent, and paper 
 was a safer confidante than even the " most 
 intimate friend I have in the world." 
 
 " That eternal Bath House ! " is an en- 
 
 ■% 
 
 try under date of October 21, 1855. " I 
 wonder how many thousand miles Mr. Car- 
 lyle has walked between here and there, 
 putting it all together ; setting up one mile- 
 stone and another betwixt himself and 
 me ! 
 
 A more characteristic note is jotted 
 down on November 5th. 
 
 " Alone this evening. Lady A. in town 
 again, and Mr. C. of course at Bath House. 
 
 " When I think of what I is 
 And what I used to was, 
 I 'gin to think I 've sold myself 
 
 For very little cas." 
 
 Plucky and wretched wee wifie ! She
 
 78 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 gives a comical turn to her very misery, 
 as one grimaces under torture to keep 
 from screaming. 
 
 We are wofully out of sympathy with 
 hero-worship while we glance at the mod- 
 ernised drawing-room, pause reverently in 
 Mrs. Carlyle's bedchamber behind it, and 
 then visit the sound-proof folly that takes 
 in the whole attic-story. With all its ri- 
 diculous contrivances it cost the never rich 
 couple one thousand dollars, "turning out 
 to be," as Jane bemoans herself to a cor- 
 respondent, " the noisiest apartment in the 
 house." 
 
 We lauorh in looking^ about us at the 
 ventilators that collect and echo sound 
 and reject fresh air ; the front and back 
 windows filled with ground glass to ex- 
 clude sights from without ; the skylight 
 that must act like a burning-glass in hot 
 weather. It is an ungainly and comfort- 
 less den, — literally a waste and howling 
 wilderness. Carlyle set his Scotch jaw 
 grimly and finished Frederick the Great 
 here, nevertheless, then transferred writ- 
 ing-desk and books to the dining-room on
 
 No. 24 Cheyne Row 79 
 
 the ground-floor, where he worked until 
 his death. 
 
 The garden at the back of the house 
 is thickset with associations of our heroine. 
 The " two vines which produced two 
 bunches of grapes in the season " still 
 cling to the wall. The stump alone re- 
 mains of the walnut-tree from which she 
 gathered " almost sixpence worth of wal- 
 nuts." In the extreme left-hand angle of 
 the wall is the pear-tree to which, while 
 the house was in repairing, she lashed " a 
 gypsy's tent, constructed out of clothes- 
 ropes and posts and the crumb-cloth of 
 the library," and sat under it with her 
 work, meanwhile superintending carpen- 
 ters and painters. 
 
 Her widower did some hard thinking in 
 the garden over his " final pipe " and un- 
 der the stars, when his "heroic, lovely, 
 pathetic, noble and beautiful darling" 
 had " left him, as it were, in her car of 
 heaven's fire." 
 
 "HER little Gooseberry-bush, her 
 Hawthorn, Ash-tree, &c., are in vigorous 
 bud again, almost in leaf in this Patch of
 
 8o Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 Garden," he sentimentalises in his journal, 
 two years after her death, heedful of his 
 capitals in the midst of his grief. " Nor 
 are these sad remembrances without some 
 use to me ; solemn, high and beautifui, 
 like the Gates of Eternity, with a light as 
 of stars." 
 
 We exchange uncharitable views as to 
 the depth of the remorse expressed in 
 syllabical sobs between, and as foot-notes 
 of, letters that for spicy humour, crisp- 
 ness, play of fancy, and depth of feeling 
 have not their equals in the range of Eng- 
 lish literature. In her garden, our hearts 
 burn within us with a passion of pity. 
 
 The custodian pauses on her way back 
 to the house, and looks over her shoul- 
 der : 
 
 "You will please observe that there is 
 no side or back entrance to the kitchen. 
 All household supplies, even coals, were 
 brought in at the front door, carried along 
 the hall, and so down to the basement. 
 That must have been a trial to a ' particu- 
 lar' housekeeper like Mrs. Carlyle. As 
 to her other troubles " — forsaking the per-
 
 CARLYLE'S HOUSE AND GARDEN. 
 " The garden is thickset with associations."
 
 No. 24 Cheyne Row 81 
 
 functory tone for one that strikes us as 
 suspiciously earnest — " there are many, 
 many wives who have just as bad — and 
 worse — and the world is none the wiser. 
 The difference is that she made such an 
 outcry over her tribulations that, after all, 
 were n't so peculiar and exceptional as she 
 imagined. I 'm not denying that he was 
 a hard man to live with, but if she had 
 held her tongue, it would have been better 
 for his reputation — and maybe for her 
 own. If there was mustard in his temper, 
 there was cayenne, and plenty of it, in 
 hers."
 
 VI 
 
 DANTE'S EVERY-DAY WIFE 
 
 83
 
 
 Vci. 
 
 
 VI 
 
 DANTE'S EVERY-DAY WIFE 
 
 HER name was, of course, not Beatrice. 
 Neither did Petrarch marry Laura, 
 nor Werther his bread-and-butter Char- 
 lotte. Mrs. Unwin never became Mrs. 
 Wilham Cowper, Michael Angelo wor- 
 shipped, without espousing, Vittoria Co- 
 lonna, and Pocahontas wedded the prosy 
 widower, John Rolfe, instead of giving 
 her delicate, tawny hand to the other John 
 whose life she had the habit of saving. 
 
 For half an hour we have been roaming 
 in and out of the loops and angles of alleys 
 that did active duty as streets in the Flor- 
 ence of 1265, and which, unto this day, 
 have resisted the broadening and straight- 
 ening propensities of modern engineers. 
 Proconsolo, Pandolfini, degli Albizzi, S. 
 Martino, and half-a-score of other " Vias," 
 85
 
 86 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 intersect and zigzag as the Makers of Flor- 
 ence willed, and remain a joy forever to 
 the dreamer and historian. 
 
 The reputed birthplace of Dante in the 
 obscure Via S. Martino cowers in the shad- 
 ow of an ambitious tower built for the 
 tenancy of the foreign governors of the 
 city. It passed into the possession of a 
 private family before the great poet was 
 born. La Casa di Dante may, or may 
 not, be the same as that occupied by his 
 parents and himself. The site and the en- 
 virons suffice to feed our fancies. About 
 a stone's cast away from the home of the 
 Alighieri, and what would be just " around 
 the corner," if the Via obeyed just and 
 rectilinear rules, lived Folco Portinari, 
 father of the Beatrice whose name jingles 
 as accordantly with Dante's as Adam's 
 with Eve's. This house has also been 
 pulled at, if not down, and reconstructed 
 into a palace. The court was unaltered 
 in the renovations, and to the right, as 
 one enters from the street, is " Dante's 
 Niche " {Nicchia di Dante) where the love- 
 lorn boy of Portinari's neighbour made a
 
 Dante's Every-Day Wife 87 
 
 fixture of himself by the hour upon the 
 chance of seeing his divinity flit by him, 
 on her way in, or out, of her home. While 
 lingering and watching here, he composed 
 the Vita Nuova — " a fantastic, delicious 
 record, as pure and sweet as it is vision- 
 ary," as one appreciative critic has said. 
 In the innocent frolic indulged in by the 
 boys and girls of the neighbourhood after 
 ^festa given by Folco Portinari, the nine- 
 year-old Dante met, perhaps joined hands 
 in the games with, Beatrice, a pretty girl 
 of eight. It is hardly possible that he saw 
 her then for the first time, but his eyes were 
 suddenly unsealed by some subtle chrism, 
 to behold in her his fate for time and 
 eternity. 
 
 " Her dress was of a most noble colour," 
 — he writes with naivete that makes us 
 smile — " a subdued and becoming crim- 
 son, and she wore a cincture and orna- 
 ments befitting her childish years." 
 
 A catalogue raisonn^ of ribbons, sash, 
 and jewels would be an interesting item 
 in the history of thirteenth-century mil- 
 linery.
 
 88 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 " From that time forth Love held sov- 
 ereign empire over my soul," he adds in 
 earnest good faith, Love and Beatrice 
 becoming henceforward interchangeable 
 terms. He forthwith built a bower in 
 his soul, and invited her in thought, never 
 by word or glance, to dwell therein with 
 him. He seems, moreover, to have been 
 measurably satisfied with such sublimated 
 companionship for another nine years. 
 Then, as one awakening from a vague, 
 sweet dream, the watcher in the niche had 
 a second apparition of " the wonderful 
 creature." 
 
 " She appeared to me in white robes, 
 between two ladies who were older than 
 she ; and, passing by the street, she turned 
 her eyes toward that place where I stood 
 very timidly, and in her ineffable courtesy 
 saluted me so graciously that I seemed 
 then to see the heights of all blessedness." 
 
 For all the dual chaperonage that 
 guarded the eighteen-year-old beauty, she 
 thus contrived to convey to her adorer 
 her consciousness of that which must have 
 flattered her, if it kindled no warmer
 
 Dante's Every-Day Wife 89 
 
 emotion. Boccaccio gives us more than 
 one intimation that Dante's timid worship 
 would have been graciously approved had 
 it been many degrees less " timid." At 
 their former meeting, "the child turned 
 her gaze from time to time upon Dante 
 with so much tenderness as filled the boy 
 brimful with delight." 
 
 By and by, she ceased to notice him in 
 passing, by so much as a glance — " hav- 
 ing heard, as was supposed, evil tales of 
 him." A gratuitous supposition, to our 
 way of looking at the matter. Nine years 
 was a long time, even in that patient age, 
 for a pretty girl to wait for a " declara- 
 tion." His soul exhaled in poetical sighs, 
 but he continued to stand by " very 
 timidly," and asked no questions. 
 
 At twenty, Beatrice Portinari married 
 Simone di Bardi, a husband designated 
 by her parents, an incident that in no wise 
 altered her mystic relations with the dumb 
 lover. As philosophically as tunefully he 
 says that " the Lord Love has placed all 
 my happiness in that which cannot be 
 taken from me." To the public and to
 
 90 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 her legal spouse, she seemed to dwell in 
 Simone di Bardi's house. To the clarified 
 senses of her spirit-lover, she was ever his 
 " own most gentle lady," and filled the 
 bower he had built with the radiance of 
 her presence. 
 
 For four years after her marriage, " the 
 wonderful creature, crowned and clothed 
 in humility," trod these strait streets, 
 seeming not to hear the murmurs that 
 followed her passing : " This is not a 
 woman, but one of the most beautiful 
 angels of heaven." Then she died, and 
 Dante Alighieri joined hands with her in 
 perpetual companionship, and walked with 
 her in Paradise. 
 
 The story is immortal, a miracle of 
 passion that was all flame, yet all purity, 
 of constancy to an ideal on which Disillu- 
 sion never laid a profaning finger. 
 
 Yet our hearts are soft, as after a fall of 
 spring rain, with thoughts of another wo- 
 man, concerning whom the poet has not 
 left a line so much as to tell us that she 
 ever lived and was seen by him, and to 
 whom his biographers have not cared to
 
 Dante's Every-Day Wife 91 
 
 award the honour denied her by the hus- 
 band. 
 
 In 1293 — three years after the death of 
 Simone di Bardi's wife — Dante married, 
 in the dingy Httle church of S. Martino, 
 hard by the Casa di Dante, Gemma, a 
 daughter of Manetti Donati, a wealthy 
 and powerful Florentine. Her family 
 was superior to that of the Alighieri in 
 social and political standing, but they 
 were neighbours and friends, and young 
 Dante had known Gemma from her child- 
 hood. It is quite within the probabilities 
 that she may have borne her part in the 
 games through which Beatrice glided in 
 the noble-coloured gown set off by be- 
 coming sash and trinkets. The marriage 
 was evidently agreeable to both sides of 
 the house. Dante complimented one of 
 his brothers-in-law by allotting to him a 
 respectable position in Paradise, and is, 
 himself, saluted there by the shade as 
 " sweet brother." In short, the connec- 
 tion was eminently suitable in the eyes of 
 relations, friends, and gossips in general, 
 and, so far as we can judge, a willing
 
 92 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 bridegroom led a willing bride to the 
 altar of the shabby little church we now 
 enter. A dark, stifling nook we find it, 
 pervaded by an odour that may be the 
 fumes of incense a hundred years old, and 
 much the worse for keeping. If it was 
 no larger then than at present, the kins- 
 people of Alighieri and Donati must have 
 overflowed it and the street, on the wed- 
 ding-day, six hundred years ago. 
 
 Was Gemma among the gentlewomen 
 (^gentili doniie) — " some of whom had been 
 present at my misfortunes " — who pitied 
 and sought to console him at Beatrice's 
 marriage, and again at her death ? One 
 of these fair and sympathetic acquaint- 
 ances ran to her lattice to look down 
 upon the youth of the clear-cut profile 
 and fathomless eyes, who wrote love- 
 verses and had won his spurs upon the 
 bloody field of Campaldino, and who, al- 
 though but twenty-five, was already spoken 
 of by one faction as a turbulent citizen 
 who might prove dangerous some day, 
 and by the other as a rising man. This 
 was six months before Dante's marriage.
 
 CHURCH OF SAN MARTINO, ]N WHICH DANTE WAS MARRIED.
 
 Dante's Every-Day Wife 93 
 
 He caught sight of the pitying face bent 
 upon him, and her glance was a drop of 
 bahn upon his still sore heart. If he (or 
 she) followed up the advantage afforded 
 by the accident, he was too much en- 
 grossed by the Vita Nuova and Floren- 
 tine politics to write down the fact. 
 
 We know absolutely nothing of Ma- 
 donna Gemma's personal appearance, tem- 
 per, taste, or habits. If she wore a 
 flame-coloured gown when Dante asked 
 her hand in marriage, or white when they 
 stood side by side in the wee church 
 where their fathers worshipped — nobody 
 took the pains to mention these insignifi- 
 cant details. She looked after her house 
 — probably her father's wedding-present — 
 and her husband's diet and clothes, and, 
 at the end of seven otherwise unrecorded 
 years, had added seven children to the 
 furniture of their home, and named, or let 
 the father name, one of their daughters 
 " Beatrice." 
 
 We are disposed to lay more stress upon 
 this circumstance than the christening of 
 one child in so large a family would seem
 
 94 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 to demand. The mother was not jealous 
 of her beautiful early playfellow, and was 
 cognisant of her lord's Platonic espousals 
 to the companion of his soul-wanderings 
 in other worlds than ours. Perhaps — 
 poor, simple soul ! — she juggled, and, as 
 she thought, artfully, to win a morsel of the 
 sweet loaf of affectionate commendation 
 for the pretty tribute to his spirit-bride. 
 He had vowed, when Beatrice died, "to 
 say that of her which was never yet said 
 of any woman," and he fulfilled the vow, 
 dreaming and writing of her, and weeping 
 over what he had written, while Gemma 
 bore and managed their children, and made 
 purchases in the Mercato Vecchio, and went 
 to church on Sundays and holy-days to 
 pray that his ambition and stiff principles 
 might not get him into trouble with the 
 State. 
 
 So Poe kept tryst with " Lost Lenore," 
 while Virginia Clemm, his every-day wife, 
 was dying of slow starvation in the next 
 room of the fireless Fordham cottage. 
 
 In 1 30 1, Dante left Florence on an em- 
 bassy to Rome, lingering there, at the
 
 Dante's Every-Day Wife 95 
 
 request of the Pope, until a Florentine 
 revolution made it impossible for him to 
 return to his city and home. Corso Do- 
 nati, Gemma's brother, was her husband's 
 political enemy, but he extended a grudg- 
 ing protection to his sister and her seven 
 babies after Dante was banished and pro- 
 scribed. Her house, close to the church 
 of S. Martino, was no longer a safe place 
 in which to keep valuables that might 
 tempt the cupidity of roving bands of 
 depredators, eager for news of anything 
 belonging to a confiscated estate. Gemma 
 had been sole guardian of household goods 
 and of children during her husband's year 
 of absence, and was too familiar with 
 ^nieutes to be taken by surprise by the 
 latest overthrow. Family friends offered 
 to keep her portable treasures until such 
 time as it would be safe for her to reclaim 
 them. She gathered up and packed in 
 stout coffers whatever she considered most 
 precious, and consigned them to acquaint- 
 ances less liable to suspicion than herself. 
 We see coffers every day in " antiquity " 
 lumber-rooms in dark, out-of-the-rush quar-
 
 96 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 ters of the town, roomy, and banded with 
 iron or steel, any one, or six, of which may 
 have served our thrifty house-mother at 
 that troublous epoch. 
 
 Six years afterward, when a calmer pe- 
 riod intervened, before the outburst of 
 another revolution. Madonna Gemma de- 
 puted her husband's favourite nephew to 
 overhaul one of the strono; boxes. It was 
 filled with papers of all sorts, collected in 
 her husband's study. The young fellow, 
 burrowing in the confused mass in idle, 
 affectionate curiosity, happened presently 
 upon manuscripts in his uncle's well known 
 handwriting, poems and canzoni, " and 
 among the rest which pleased him most 
 was a quadernetto, in which were written, 
 in Dante's own hand, the first seven 
 cantos of what appeared to him a very 
 beautiful thing." 
 
 Dante's biographers assume that his 
 wife guessed nothing of the value of pa- 
 pers, that, when restored to the exiled 
 poet, grew under his hand into the In- 
 fer7io. If they are right, the more credit 
 belongs to her for the love that prompted
 
 Dante's Every-Day Wife 97 
 
 the preservation of every scrap of parch- 
 ment his pen had touched. They were 
 hoarded — because they were his, and not 
 for their intrinsic worth — along with her 
 silver, jewels, and title-deeds. A selfish 
 woman would have left them where they 
 lay, upon shelves and tables the master 
 had not seen in twelve months. A woman 
 without sentiment would have burned 
 them as waste-paper. 
 
 " Since it has pleased God that it should 
 not be lost, but sent back to me, I will do 
 my best to follow up the work according 
 to my first intention," was the pious ac- 
 knowledgment of the author to the Provi- 
 dence that had restored his manuscript to 
 him. 
 
 He was ready to ascribe praise to the 
 Great Giver of the unexpected good. 
 There was no word then, or ever, for 
 God's humble instrument in the work of 
 preservation. The world that cherishes 
 his noblest poem as a perpetual heritage 
 does not look back to the means by which 
 it was transmitted to us. 
 
 Before the discovery of the priceless
 
 98 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 rough draught of the seven cantos, Gemma 
 had sent her eldest born, Pietro, a lad of 
 thirteen, to cheer his father's loneliness in 
 Bologna, and — we cannot but surmise — 
 with some faint hope that her husband's 
 heart would turn longingly to home and 
 her for that in the boy's face and voice 
 that recalled her younger and blither self. 
 Pietro studied with his father during 
 Dante's two years' sojourn in the univer- 
 sity town, and accompanied him in wan- 
 derings that ended in Ravenna, " the 
 melancholy old city, old even in Dante's 
 day." A second son, Jacopo, was con- 
 signed by his mother to the expatriated 
 father, a few years after his brother left 
 Florence. Whatever were the mitiga- 
 tions of his banishment which the two 
 brought, Dante's heart yearned and sick- 
 ened unto deathly faintness for " the most 
 beautiful and most famous daughter of 
 Rome, Firenza." " A bark without sail 
 and without helm," his passionate love 
 for the peerless Tuscan city was a magnet 
 that continually drew his thoughts toward 
 her. Even after he found a pleasant asy-
 
 DANTE ALIQHIERI, FROM THE FRESCO BY GIOTTO, FLORENCE. 
 " The youth with the clear-cut profile and fathomless eyes."
 
 Dante's Every-Day Wife 99 
 
 lum and kind friends in Ravenna, he 
 passed whole days in the balsamic boski- 
 ness of her pine groves, " thinking of 
 Florence and civil wars, and meditating 
 cantos of his poem," 
 
 Be assured that if the name of Gemma, 
 or of the young daughters, fast growing 
 to womanhood, ever passed his lips or 
 escaped from his pen, we should have 
 heard of it. If he pined for home it was 
 because that home was in Firenza, not 
 because Firenza was home. 
 
 Madonna Gemma Alighieri never looked 
 again into the deep eyes and upon the clas- 
 sic face whose beauty had captivated and 
 held her heart. The exile drew his last 
 sigh in Ravenna in 1321, a homesick pil- 
 grim to the close of his fifty-six years, 
 dreaming hopelessly, almost in the death- 
 hour, of return to his native country, and 
 of " hiding his white hairs beneath the 
 leaves " of the laureate's crown bestowed 
 by repentant compatriots. 
 
 " And there can be no doubt," we state 
 upon the authority of Boccaccio, "that he 
 was received into the arms of his most no-
 
 loo Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 ble Beatrice, with whom, in the presence of 
 Him Who is the Chief Good, leaving all 
 miseries of the present life, they now most 
 lightsomely live in that happiness to which 
 there comes no end." 
 
 Dante had foreseen, in beatific vision, 
 this apotheosis a quarter-century before. 
 
 " May it please Him, Who is the Lord 
 of courtesy, that my soul may see the glory 
 of my lady, that blessed Beatrice, who 
 gloriously beholds His face." 
 
 We find no entry anywhere of Gemma's 
 death, or if she were wife or widow when 
 she and the working-day world parted com- 
 pany. Pietro and Jacopo left Ravenna 
 after their father's death, and became two 
 gentlemen of Verona under the patronage 
 of a noble friend of Dante. Alive or dead, 
 their mother had no hold upon their alle- 
 giance. They were weaned from her and 
 from Florence. 
 
 We never pass the Piazza Santa Croce 
 without pausing to look at the statue of 
 Dante in the centre of the square. It was 
 set here when he had been dead five hun- 
 dred and forty-four years.
 
 Dante's Every-Day Wife loi 
 
 " Florence now to love him is content," 
 is the tardy congratulation of an Anglo- 
 Italian poet. There is a suggestion, in 
 the statue, of the haughty disdain we can 
 imagine the hunted exile might have felt 
 had he been foretold, in dying, of the post- 
 humous tribute. One nervous hand has 
 gathered up his robe, as from contact with 
 the dust of the city that barred her gates 
 and her heart against him, and now ranks 
 him among her gods. About the pedestal 
 the Florentine lions hold up to the specta- 
 tor shields lettered with the titles of his 
 famous works. Conspicuous among them 
 is that of the Vita Nuova, wherein he re- 
 deemed his pledge to the shade of the 
 " blessed Beatrice," and the far nobler In- 
 ferno, saved to him and to posterity by 
 the housewifely thrift and single-hearted 
 devotion of his Every-Day Wife.
 
 VII 
 THE PROPHET OF SAN MARCO 
 
 103
 
 VII 
 
 THE PROPHET OF SAN MARCO 
 
 IT is a solemn shade that has walked 
 with us all through the forenoon of 
 this April day. A shade with a visage as 
 sad as was his life, as stern as his death, 
 has moved at our side. From the Duomo, 
 which was thronged for six years with 
 Florentines of every grade of society and 
 order of intellect, to listen to the Preacher- 
 monk of San Marco, — along streets twist- 
 ing between cliff-like walls which echoed 
 to his footsteps, four hundred years agone, 
 — to the now commonplace Piazza San 
 Marco. 
 
 The plain facade of the Church and the 
 low wings of the cloisters bound one side ; 
 more modern buildings, pensiones and 
 shops, the other three. A hideous tram- 
 way enters the square at the side of the 
 105
 
 io6 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 cloisters, and runs the entire length to the 
 egress at the bottom of the open space. 
 The centre of the quadrangle is planted 
 with bushy palms and stubbly palmettoes, 
 and out of the stiff and sombre greenery 
 rises a semi-colossal statue of a modern 
 Italian patriot, facing the street that bears 
 the name of another hero of Young Italy. 
 
 On a day as balmy as this, about the 
 beginning of Lent in 1498, the Piazza was 
 packed to suffocation by a concourse of 
 men and women, many kneeling, some 
 standing, all with eyes fixed upon a soli- 
 tary black-robed figure lifted far above 
 their heads by a scaffold erected against 
 the front wall of the Church. 
 
 The monk's cowl had fallen back from 
 the upraised face ; the noble head and 
 draped figure stood out in bold relief 
 against the pale blank behind him. At 
 the full length of his right arm he held the 
 Pyx above his head. In rising from his 
 knees after a moment of silent prayer, he 
 had spoken one sentence. The wonderful 
 voice that had so often swayed the mixed 
 multitude in the Duomo, pealed to the re-
 
 The Prophet of San Marco 107 
 
 motest outskirts of the square, a volume 
 of sound that might have fallen from the 
 vast hollow of the heavens above the 
 startled host. The excommunicated man 
 had already and publicly defied the thun- 
 ders of the Pontifical throne : 
 
 " He who has gained the Pontifical chair 
 by bribery is not Christ's Vicar. . . 
 His commands are contrary to the Chris- 
 tian life. It is lawful to disobey them," 
 were words that had shaken all Florence 
 and all Italy to superstitious trembling. 
 His challenore now was to Hiofh Heaven : 
 
 " If I have said anything to you, citizens 
 of Florence, in the name of God which 
 was not true ; if the Apostolical censure 
 pronounced against me is valid ; — if I 
 have deceived a^iyone — pray to God that 
 He will send fire from Heaven upon me 
 and consume me in presence of the peo- 
 ple, — and I pray our Lord God, Three in 
 One, whose body I hold in this Blessed 
 Sacrament, to send death to me in this 
 place if I have not preached the truth." 
 
 Then, in the upper air where he stood, 
 and over the praying masses below, there
 
 io8 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 was silence about the space of half-an-hour 
 before Girolamo Savonarola descended 
 the pulpit steps and, attended by a proces- 
 sion of friars and acolytes, chanting a Te 
 Deu7n, returned to the Convent. 
 
 Still following the solemn shade, we 
 walk, seldom uttering a word, past what 
 was once the peaceful Convent garden, 
 where, in his earlier and happier days, 
 Savonarola gathered the novices, whom he 
 fondly called " our angels " {i nostri angi- 
 oli), in an arbour covered by damask roses, 
 — and so on, along corridors, and by cells 
 painted with " incomparable sweet angels," 
 and other sacred subjects, by Fra Angel- 
 ico, upon his knees, — until we reach the 
 Prior's Cell. A portrait of Savonarola 
 from the brush of his trusty and well- 
 beloved Fra Bartolommeo, hangs against 
 the wall. It is hardly more distinct to our 
 bodily eyes than the shadowy visage we 
 have had with us all the morning. Rug- 
 ged, uncomely, the heavily moulded feat- 
 ures belying the tradition of his gentle 
 blood, and telling, more forcibly than his 
 pen has done, what battles the spirit
 
 CELL OF SAVONAROLA IN CONVENT OF SAN MARCO,
 
 The Prophet of San Marco 109 
 
 waged with flesh and passion — it is yet 
 the face of a master among men, and a 
 conqueror to the end, even when that end 
 was a shameful death. 
 
 The resemblance to George Eliot, often 
 commented upon by those who have com- 
 pared the two portraits, is the more strik- 
 ing to us now, for the circumstance that a 
 volume of Romola is our companion in this 
 day's round, and we have read the elo- 
 quent description of the friar's appeal to 
 Heaven, standing just where the shadow 
 of the pulpit and the gowned figure must 
 have fallen on that memorable morning. 
 His crucifix is here, his rosary, the hard 
 chair in which he sat at "his desk, some 
 MSS., — among them his sober and sensi- 
 ble argument against " The Trial by Fire," 
 proposed, and afterward insisted upon, by 
 his Franciscan enemies, — his hair-cloth 
 shirt, and a bit of browned wood from 
 which we withdraw our eyes quickly. It 
 was taken from the pile on which he was 
 burned to ashes in the Piazza della Si- 
 gnoria, at the will of the Florence he had 
 saved, over and again, from the power of
 
 I lo Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 her enemies ; the fair Florence he sought, 
 with his latest breath, to save from the 
 worst of her foes, even her violent, disso- 
 lute, rapacious, and most ungrateful self. 
 
 There is one window in the Prior's Cell, 
 and it differed in nothing from the com- 
 fortless niches occupied by his subordi- 
 nates, except in the simple grandeur of 
 him who tenanted it. In memory of what 
 made that difference, we bend our heads in 
 reverence, and our hearts swell to aching. 
 
 His farewell to Convent and Brother- 
 hood, and to his " angels," was said in the 
 vaulted library near the close of that very 
 Lent ushered in by the scene in the Piazza 
 which we have described. A mob, led by 
 the vilest fellows of the parties opposed to 
 Savonarola's endeavours to reform a cor- 
 rupt Church and regulate a lawless State, 
 attacked the Church of San Marco during 
 the Vesper Service of Palm Sunday. The 
 small congregation dispersed in terror, 
 leaving the inmates of the Convent to sup- 
 port the fury of the assault. The monks 
 attempted a brave, but vain, defence of 
 their altar and their lives. Savonarola,
 
 The Prophet of San Marco 1 1 1 
 
 crucifix in hand, cast himself between the 
 rioters and his friends, and led the de- 
 voted little band out of the burning church 
 into the great library. As calmly as if 
 they had been kneeling as usual for even- 
 ing prayer and to receive his benediction, 
 he told them that the end of the long 
 struggle had come. 
 
 " I little thought that the whole city 
 would so soon have turned against me ; 
 but God's will be done ! My last admon- 
 ition to you is this — Let your arms be 
 Faith, Patience, and Prayer. I leave you 
 with anguish and pain, to pass into the 
 hands of my enemies. I know not whether 
 they will take my life. But of this I am 
 certain, — that dead, I shall be able to do 
 far more for you in Heaven than living I 
 have ever had power to do for you on earth. 
 Be comforted, embrace the Cross, and by 
 that you will find the haven of salvation." 
 
 He threaded, for the last time, the fa- 
 miliar streets by the route we now take to 
 the Piazza della Signoria. His hands 
 were bound tightly behind him ; the hoot- 
 ing, hustling populace followed so hard
 
 112 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 after him that the pent-house made over 
 his head by the crossed pikes and swords 
 of the soldiery, whose orders were to bring 
 him to their masters alive, did not suffice 
 to ward off all blows and missiles. He was 
 dragged thus, battered and bleeding, and 
 more dead than alive, past the Duomo, 
 where, less than two years before, he had 
 preached to " more people than could get 
 into the Cathedral." 
 
 " They got up in the middle of the night, 
 and came to the door of the Cathedral, 
 waiting outside 'till it should be opened. 
 Then the silence was great in the 
 church, each one going to his place ; and 
 he who could read, with a taper in his 
 hand, read the service and other prayers. 
 Thus they waited three or four 
 hours 'till the Padre (Savonarola) entered 
 the pulpit. And the attention of so great 
 a mass of people, all with eyes and ears 
 attent upon the preacher, was wonderful. 
 They listened so, that when the sermon 
 reached its end, it seemed to them that 
 it had scarcely begun." 
 
 This had gone on for the eight years he
 
 The Prophet of San Marco 113 
 
 had foretold as the duration of his mighty 
 work in that place. 
 
 Bruised, and we hope in mercy, stunned, 
 the fallen Father (!) was carried across the 
 great Piazza della Signoria, over the very 
 spot covered in the Carnival of 1496 with 
 the pyramidal bonfire of vanities collected 
 by his regiment of converted gamins. 
 
 The reformer was then upon the top 
 wave of popular favour. The effort " to 
 get up the dear old masques and practical 
 jokes, well spiced with indecency," was fu- 
 tile at that memorable festa. 
 
 " Such thinors were not to be tolerated 
 in a city where Christ was declared King." 
 The Florentine street -boys, the agents 
 in the collection of dice, playing-cards, 
 " masks and masquerading dresses ; hand- 
 some copies of Ovid, Boccaccio, Petrarca, 
 Pulci, and other books of a vain or im- 
 pure sort ; rouge-pots, false hair, mirrors, 
 perfumes, powders, and transparent veils 
 . and on the top of all, the sym- 
 bolic figure of the old debauched Carni- 
 val," — paraded the streets, " singing divine 
 praises, and walking in white robes."
 
 114 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 Their leader was watchful of them 
 throughout. . 
 
 "The Florentine youth had very evil 
 habits and foul tongues. It seemed, at 
 first, an unmixed blessing when they were 
 got to shout, ' Viva Gesii !' But Savo- 
 narola was forced to say, at last, from 
 the pulpit : * There is a little too much 
 shouting of " Viva GesU ! " This constant 
 utterance of sacred words brings them 
 into contempt.'" 
 
 The coat-of-arms of the so-called " regen- 
 erate city" is carved upon the front of the 
 Palazzo Vecchio — the letters " I. H. S." 
 encircled by rays. It was not there when 
 he who had, nevertheless, proclaimed his 
 Lord and Master King of Florence, and 
 of the Universe, was haled into the gates 
 to prison and to torture. 
 
 We mount the hundreds of stone steps 
 he was forced to climb while he could 
 walk, up which he was borne by cursing 
 jailors after each repetition of the tortures 
 applied without pity and without stint. 
 
 " We have had to deal with a man of the 
 most extraordinary patience of body and
 
 The Prophet of San Marco 1 1 5 
 
 wisdom of soul, who hardened himself 
 against all kinds of torture," wrote his 
 judicial murderers to their Commander, 
 the Pope of Rome, whom the " man" had 
 defied. " Notwithstanding a long and 
 most careful interrogatory, and with all 
 the help of torture, we could scarcely 
 extract anything out of him which he 
 wished to conceal from us, although we 
 laid open the' inmost recesses of his mind." 
 In the intervals separating these various 
 processes of laying open his mind, he was 
 confined in the eyrie to which we have 
 laboriously ascended, — the Alber^ghettino, 
 a cell so strait that a tall man could 
 hardly stretch himself in it. A mere slit 
 of a window showed him a section of blue 
 sky by day, a star or two by night. When 
 they brought him in, fainting from the 
 rack, they flung him upon the stone ledge 
 that served him for a bed by night, a seat 
 by day. The street sounds of the false 
 city that had spewed him out of her 
 mouth, came up to him like sighing break- 
 ers upon a distant shore. Here and thus 
 he spent the Easter of 1498.
 
 ii6 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 Pen and ink were ahvays within his 
 reach — left there with a purpose — and 
 with devilish craft. With them he wrote 
 " Meditations " upon such passages as 
 ''Have mercy up07i me, O God, according 
 to Thy loving- kindness^' and '' Pull 7ne out 
 of the net that they have laid privily for 
 me, for Thou art my strength^ The rack 
 had dislocated his left arm and wrist ; the 
 right hand was spared that he might afhx 
 a legible signature to his recantation. 
 
 Failing to extort this, they condemned 
 him to die in the bonfire (bel fuoco) 
 which his enemies had promised them- 
 selves and their associate demons should 
 ere long light up the grey brows of the 
 Palazzo Vecchio. 
 
 He passed his last night of pain, by 
 gracious and special permission of the 
 Signoria, in the hall on a lower floor 
 {the Sala dei Cinquecc7it6). It had been 
 enlarged under Savonarola's own superin- 
 tendence to accommodate two thousand 
 citizens, should they wish to converse 
 upon affairs of State. He had preached 
 here several times, in the days when his
 
 The Prophet of San Marco 1 1 7 
 
 word was law as well as gospel, to his 
 fickle hearers, and upon the wall were 
 lettered words dictated by himself — of 
 which this is a poor translation : 
 
 " If this great council and sure government, 
 O people ! of thy city, never cease 
 To be by these preserved, as by God sent. 
 In freedom shalt thou ever stand, and peace." 
 
 The two friars who were also to die on 
 the morrow were with him, and they 
 talked together until his strength gave 
 out, of what they were to endure, and what 
 lay beyond. As their Master had not 
 protested His innocence upon the Cross, 
 he said to them, neither should they speak 
 to the people to-morrow. It would soon 
 be over now, and so he bade " God bless 
 them," and " Good-night," before falling 
 asleep with his head in the lap of the 
 younger of the two. 
 
 At sunrise, they partook of their last 
 Sacrament, and repeated together their 
 last Confession of Faith. On their way 
 along the platform stretched from the 
 Palazzo to the gallows and funeral pyre
 
 ii8 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 erected over there in the square, Savona- 
 rola was overheard by his executioners 
 repeating to himself : " / believe in God, 
 the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven 
 and earth, and in 'Jes2LS Christ, His Only 
 Son, our Lord" and so on to the close of 
 the Creed. 
 
 For three-hundred-and-odd years the 
 women of Florence used to resort to the 
 Piazza della Signoria to lay flowers upon 
 the spot where rested the gallows' foot on 
 the 23d of May, 1498, in grateful memory 
 of the prophet whom their fathers had 
 killed. 
 
 " In Heaven," said a successor of the 
 Pope who ordered the deed, " I shall 
 know the explanation of three great mys- 
 teries — the Immaculate Conception, the 
 suppression of the Society of Jesus, the 
 death of Savonarola. . . . Saint, schis- 
 matic, or heretic, ignorant vandal or Chris- 
 tian artist, prophet, or charlatan, champion 
 of the Roman Church, or apostle of eman- 
 cipated Italy — which was Savonarola?" 
 
 The Church by whose Infallible Head 
 he was brought to the torture-chamber and
 
 PALAZZO VECCHIO, FLORENCE. 
 Where Savonarola was imprisoned, and in front of which he was burned.
 
 The Prophet of San Marco 1 19 
 
 the scaffold, and the world that was not 
 worthy of him, give a tardy answer. 
 
 A certain Monseigneur, a Lord Cardi- 
 nal, interested himself actively in a cele- 
 bration of the four hundredth anniversary 
 of Savonarola's " martyrdom." There 
 were memorial services and a solemn 
 mass in honour of him who was born four 
 centuries too soon, the Italian Luther, 
 whose eyes were not to behold the dawn 
 of the Reformation his faith forecast.
 
 VIII 
 
 A FOURTEENTH-CENTURY 
 NEW WOMAN 
 
 131
 
 VIII 
 
 A FOURTEENTH-CENTURY 
 NEW WOMAN 
 
 THE Pensione della Santa Caterina, the 
 quaintest, cleanest, and altogether 
 most home-like Traveller's Refuge we 
 have found on the Continent, is our abid- 
 ing-place during our stay in Siena, 
 
 The city itself is a treasury of rich and 
 rare interests to historian and archaeolo- 
 gist. " They say," and we choose to be- 
 lieve, that it was founded by Senio, the 
 son of Remus, hunted from Rome by his 
 uncle Romulus. We receive the legend 
 into good and credulous hearts, laughing, 
 once and again, at the perverse inclination 
 to reverse the outlaw's relationship by 
 saying " Uncle Remus." The easy belief 
 is " rubbed in " at every third corner by 
 the group of the nursing wolf and twin 
 123
 
 124 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 babies in bronze or stone. We counted 
 ten iron pillars capped by it in one drive 
 through the streets. The streets, that are 
 the steepest we have ever slid down or 
 trudged up ; the hoary towers and palace 
 fagades fretted to the eaves with carvings 
 a thousand years old ; the unbroken wall 
 of ruddy bricks, as old and as hard as the 
 grey stones, belting the eyrie of Longo- 
 bard kings and Ghibelline, of Guelph and 
 the Dukes of Lorraine, — are replete with 
 fascination. 
 
 Yet the name and the fame of a woman 
 drew us to Siena. And staunch Protest- 
 ants though we are, our first visit in the 
 town is to the Fullonica, otherwise the 
 house of Giacomo Benincasa, the "ful- 
 lone," or dyer, whose daughter Catherine 
 has given more repute to her native town 
 than all the warriors, artists, and sages 
 who had part in Siena's glory and in her 
 humiliation. 
 
 As a matter of course, and as we had 
 expected, superstition has conspired with 
 bad taste to do away with every trace of 
 domestic occupation, such as would have
 
 A 14th-century New Woman 125 
 
 made the respectable mediaeval abode of a 
 respectable tradesman a source of reveren- 
 tial delight to the intelligent pilgrim. 
 When we have gained the head of the 
 flight of stone steps, glossy with age, lead- 
 ing from the street to the door of the 
 house, and which were here in Catherine's 
 lifetime, disillusion begins its foul work. 
 The roof, under which twenty-five children 
 were born to Giacomo and Lapa, his wife 
 (who, by the way, lived to the age of 
 ninety), has given place to the arches and 
 loftier ceilings of a chapel. The loggia 
 and a church are built over the garden 
 where the fourteen children who grew to 
 man's and woman's estate played and 
 quarrelled and made up again, and Cath- 
 erine tended the flowers she loved always 
 and wove into garlands on saints' days, 
 and bound into bouquets for her sick pen- 
 sioners. The room where she collected 
 her co-workers of the order of the Mantel- 
 lata to help her sew for the town poor is 
 deformed into a gaudy oratory ; in the 
 floor of her tiny bedroom we are invited 
 to look at the stone pillow on which she
 
 126 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 laid her head at night after a day of toil, 
 fastings, and prayers. The stone is pro- 
 tected by a grating from the hands and 
 lips of pitying visitors. A glass frame 
 contains fragments of her veils ; the head 
 and upper part of her walking-stick ; the 
 vinaigrette she used in the wards of pest- 
 houses, and to revive the plague-stricken 
 creatures who fell dying in the streets ; 
 the lantern that lighted her steps when 
 summoned by night on errands of mercy ; 
 and, what drives us out of the house in a 
 fit of disgustful impatience, the " Borsa ove 
 la portata da Roma da Siena la sacra testa 
 della Santa" — the bag in which the head of 
 the saint was brought from Rome to Siena. 
 
 She died at the early age of thirty-three. 
 The next year, " the Republic of Siena 
 having expressed by a deputation of its 
 citizens to the Roman Pontiff its jealousy 
 of the honour of the possession of the 
 body of the saint," the Pope (Urban VI.) 
 ordered the "pious mutilation," and pre- 
 sented the head to Catherine's native 
 town. 
 
 A peep into Giacomo's workshop is a
 
 ENTRANCE TO SAINT CATHERINE'S HOUSE.
 
 A 14th-century New Woman 127 
 
 welcome diversion of unpleasing thoughts. 
 It adjoins the chapel that was his dwell- 
 ing, and opens into the salesroom where 
 his wares were exposed for sale. Upon 
 shelves running around three sides of the 
 room are queer little parcels, all of the 
 same size, and bearing a surprising re- 
 semblance to neat paint-pots. Each is 
 gayly coloured, and emblazoned with the 
 arms of the noble families whose repre- 
 sentatives have visited the place and left 
 tokens of reverential esteem for dyer and 
 daughter. 
 
 Hurrying out to avert the profanation 
 of a genuine, nineteenth-century laugh, 
 we are arrested upon the stone stair by 
 what brings back the tone of thought and 
 speech we have wished to maintain 
 throughout what is, in effect, a pious 
 pilgrimage. 
 
 High up on the wall of a house across 
 the way is a stone label bearing the figure 
 of a goose in bold relief. We are in the 
 Ward of the Goose ( Contrada d'Oca), a 
 district peopled in 1337, the year of Cath- 
 erine Benincasa's birth, by artisans, small
 
 128 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 shopkeepers, and day-labourers. In the 
 thirty-three years that followed, it became 
 the most illustrious quarter of the city, al- 
 though still tenanted by the lower classes, 
 and only because it was the lowly born 
 woman's home. 
 
 The strait, precipitous street is more 
 like a tunnel than a thoroughfare, and 
 the prospect of the distant country is seen 
 at the other end of the vista as in a mas- 
 sive frame. Hills — noble in outline, soft 
 and rich in colour, with silver-grey swath- 
 ings of olive orchards drawn across their 
 breasts — meet the unfathomable blue of 
 the Italian firmament. At the foot of the 
 street is the famous Fonte Branda, built 
 in the twelfth century. Lion's heads, fe- 
 rocious through all these centuries, are 
 thrust out from the wall, and within the 
 arched enclosure is a series of square 
 tanks, the upper emptying into the lower. 
 Here, ever since the lions took up their 
 watch and ward above, the Sienese women 
 have washed household linen, and scolded, 
 and held a Gossips' Exchange, as they are 
 doing this very hour. The clear water of
 
 A 14th-century New Woman 129 
 
 the upper tank becomes yeasty with suds 
 in the second and third. The soiled Hnen 
 is dipped into the pool common to all who 
 come, drawn back to the marble edge of 
 the tank, soaped abundantly, scrubbed 
 with a stiff brush, swashed about in the 
 water, again drawn up, wrung, and tossed 
 into baskets. The din of slapping the 
 wet clothes upon the marble ledge, sousing, 
 rubbing, and shaking them, is a staccato 
 accompaniment to the shrill clack of un- 
 modulated peasant voices. The foot-path 
 winding up the cliff behind the fountain 
 is the shortest route to the Church of San 
 Dominico, and we begin the ascent, pur- 
 sued by the tumult, and pausing, midway, 
 for another look at the singular scene. 
 
 Six hundred years ago the women of the 
 Contrada d' Oca were working, quarrelling, 
 and hobnobbing noisily together, when 
 the dyer's daughter, — eyed with affec- 
 tionate reverence by the many, with idle 
 curiosity by some, by a very few enviously, 
 — stayed her feet on the way to the place 
 of prayer, to ask gently after this one's 
 young child, and to offer her services in
 
 I30 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 nursing that one's aged mother, or to take 
 home the family mending of the over- 
 wrought mother of a large famil)\ She 
 never volunteered censure, or adverse 
 criticism in the hearing of others than the 
 sinner's self ; as a child-saint, whose visions 
 and aspirations set her apart from the rest 
 of Giacomo and Lapa's brood, she was 
 never priggish. Humility grew and mel- 
 lowed into meekness with her years. We 
 can think how the clamour — louder than 
 the sparrings and cacklings of a poultry- 
 yard, and not unlike them in emulous dis- 
 cords — if hushed while Catherine talked 
 with the workers, swelled out anew as 
 the slight form disappeared over the brow 
 of the bank. The foot-path is lined now, 
 and doubtless was then, with the drying 
 " wash," spread upon bushes and turf. 
 One wizened little crone toils up ahead of 
 us with a basket of damp linen, as big, and 
 apparently as heavy, as herself, on her back. 
 A pair of the superb white oxen of the 
 Siena cavipagna, harnessed to a cart, bar- 
 ricades the direct route, and she will not 
 diverge by so much as a foot from the
 
 A 14th-century New Woman 131 
 
 beaten path. In a voice as shrill and cross 
 as a guinea-hen's, she calls the owner from 
 his house, " to take his beasts out of an 
 honest woman's road," and when he obeys, 
 goes on upward, grumbling at every step. 
 
 Such were Catherine of Siena's social 
 compeers and daily associates. Soul and 
 thought might soar into celestial ether ; her 
 feet were bound to coarsest mire. We 
 picture to ourselves the fragile figure, 
 quickening its speed involuntarily to gain 
 the holy silence of the ugly church and 
 escape from the windy storm of tempers, 
 the tempest of tongues. 
 
 There is a high mass in San Dominico 
 to-day. We are met at the entrance by 
 the smell of incense, the sound of chanting 
 voices, the sight of a kneeling crowd as- 
 sembled just without a small but ornate 
 chapel dedicated to St. Catherine. It is 
 lined with exquisite paintings. A fresco 
 by Sodoma, representing the saint's ecstatic 
 swoon in the arms of two attendant nuns, 
 is startling in beautiful realism as seen in 
 the subdued light shed by the altar-lamps. 
 We have happened upon a "holy day,"
 
 132 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 we speedily discover, and one of the half- 
 dozen or so a year when the head of St. 
 Catherine is exhibited alike to the believ- 
 ing and the skeptical. We see it — a livid 
 memento mori, enough like her portraits to 
 pain, as well as repel, us. It is enclosed 
 in a hermetically sealed tabernacle, but the 
 flare of the altar-candles falls full upon it. 
 Some of the women weep, all kneel and 
 cross themselves, eyes bent upon the holy 
 relic ceded to Siena by the gracious See 
 of Rome. 
 
 After one swift look, we turn away and 
 retreat noiselessly from the crowd, finding 
 our way, without guide or sacristan, to 
 what we came hither to see, — the real 
 chapel and oratory of Catherine of Siena. 
 
 Such a plain, bare room to eyes aching 
 from the gorgeousness of the shrine built 
 over and above the poor, dismembered 
 head ! A few cheap frescoes ; a mean 
 altar at one end ; above the altar the one 
 authentic likeness of Catherine extant, 
 painted by an artist who was her disciple 
 and dear friend ; a tablet or two, and stone 
 benches built into the walls — these are all
 
 SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA. 
 The only authentic portrait extant.
 
 A 14th-century New Woman 133 
 
 we see, and we are thankful. Thankful, 
 especially, that besides ourselves, not a 
 human creature enters the room during 
 the silent, busy half-hour we spend in the 
 effort to winnow biography from tradition, 
 and history from ecclesiastical and ex cathe- 
 dra detail. 
 
 For we do not forget in Protestant and 
 rational intolerance with the usual run of 
 the " Lives of the Saints," that Catherine 
 Benincasa was no more a myth than Joan 
 of Arc, or than Bernardino Ochino, born, 
 like her, in the Ward of the Goose, whose 
 "words," said the Emperor Charles V., 
 " would move stones to tears." The four- 
 teenth century produced no woman who 
 was her equal, few men who excelled her 
 in mental gifts, and none who were her 
 superiors in virtue. We have read, and 
 then turned our backs upon, the entabla- 
 tured inscription telling that " Here she 
 was invested with the habit of St. Domi- 
 nic ; and she was the first woman who 
 ever wore it. Here, she remained with- 
 drawn from the world, listening to the 
 Divine Services of the Church, and here.
 
 134 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 continually in divine colloquy, she con- 
 versed familiarly with Jesus Christ, her 
 Spouse. Here, leaning against this pilas- 
 ter, she was rapt in frequent ecstasies." 
 
 The tales of her trances ; her miracles 
 of faith, of healing and of prophecy ; the 
 visions and revelations in which she be- 
 lieved as devoutly as the Maid of Orleans 
 in her " Voices " — are to be interpreted 
 by the help of latter-day common-sense, 
 and appreciation of intellectual and spirit- 
 ual laws unknown in the Middle Agres. 
 We are sure that Catherine was sincere in 
 her mysticism, not upon the authority of 
 the forty biographies written of her, but 
 because she was a good and a truthful 
 woman. We know — thanks to the abun- 
 dant enliorhtenment of these same latter 
 days — that the asceticism which ruined 
 her health and brought her to an early 
 grave, the hair-cloth, and the starvation of 
 her beautiful body, the stone pillow and 
 the bed of planks, surrounded by other 
 planks, that she might ever be mindful of 
 death and the coffin, — were grievous er- 
 rors, even in a generation that accounted
 
 A 14th-century New Woman 135 
 
 them unto its holy ones as righteousness. 
 Setting all this aside, the wonder of her 
 day is even more a wonder unto ours. 
 
 Born a year before the outbreak of the 
 plague that reduced the population of Si- 
 ena from one hundred thousand to one- 
 fifth of that number, she lived in childhood 
 and early womanhood under the chill 
 shadow of that awful visitation. The 
 brevity of human life and the vanity of 
 mortal hopes ; the supreme importance of 
 preparation for Eternity, and the duty 
 of each pious soul to other souls, — were 
 borne in upon her young mind by all that 
 she saw and heard until she resolved to 
 think of nothing but Christ and His king- 
 dom, to devote every power of her mind, 
 every hour of her time, every affection of 
 her soul, to His service. In the exalta- 
 tion induced by resolve and effort, she 
 beheld, when but six years of age, "look- 
 ing up to the glorious clouds of evening 
 over the gable end of the church of S. 
 Dominico, a vision of Jesus, very gloriously 
 apparelled, and terrible in majesty and 
 beauty, Who looked towards her and
 
 136 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 smiled lovingly upon her, extending His 
 hand in blessing." 
 
 When the trance was rudely broken by 
 her little brother's tug upon her hand, she 
 " turned homewards, weeping. From this 
 moment she became more grave and 
 thoughtful than before." 
 
 To the like seasons of rapt devotion, 
 when she could not have told whether she 
 were in the body or out of it, may be re- 
 ferred her mystic espousal to Christ, a 
 claim made for, rather than by, her, that 
 has prejudiced the minds of sober Protest- 
 ants against her whole character and pro- 
 fessions. 
 
 Again translating into our everyday 
 speech the pious hyperbolism of her times, 
 we draw from the tale of St. Catherine's 
 Marriage the simple truth that hers was 
 a " life hid with Christ in God." Rowland 
 Hill, the great English preacher, clothed 
 the same longing and its glorious fulfil- 
 ment in the homely hymn he loved to 
 chant, walking up and down his room 
 while his face " was as the face of an 
 angel " :
 
 A 14th-century New Woman 137 
 
 "But this I do find, 
 We two are so joined, 
 He '11 not go to glory and leave me behind." 
 
 We do not misunderstand St. Paul's talk 
 of " bearing about in his body the marks 
 of the Lord Jesus." When Catherine 
 Benincasa used a similar figure of her 
 wasted and racked frame, her admirers, 
 unlearned, and full of superstitious fancies, 
 whispered, awe-stricken, stories of the 
 "■stigmata^' and churchly annals have 
 aided church-ridden artists in the per- 
 petuation of the legend. Catherine's 
 biographers, contemporary and of later 
 date, expressly say that she never spoke of 
 having received the stigmata. 
 
 With all her dreams and mystic revela- 
 tions, her religion was practical and most 
 Christlike. She was full of good works 
 and alms-deeds which she did, esteeming 
 no office menial, no gift a sacrifice that 
 lessened the sufferings, or heightened the 
 happiness of Christ's " little ones." She 
 was always cheerful, even joyous, we are 
 told, full of tenderest charity for the err- 
 ing, yet courageous in rebuking wilful
 
 T38 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 sins. At the age of sixteen, she was the 
 leader of the order of the Mantellata, a 
 Woman's Charitable Society, as we would 
 term it. In 1374 the plague broke out 
 again in Siena. The rich and great fled 
 from the city ; those who could not go 
 died by the thousand. " Sometimes the 
 priests and those who carried out the dead 
 sat down to rest, and never rose again," 
 and some of the poorer streets were liter- 
 ally blocked with corpses. At the head 
 of her Mantellatas, Catherine wrought, 
 night and day, " in the most infected 
 quarters," nursing the sick, feeding the 
 starving, preparing the dead for burial. 
 Instances are not wanting- of what were 
 rated as miraculous cures wrought by her 
 prayers, and here, again, the testimony of 
 her disciples outran her modest confession 
 of means and end. She believed firmly, 
 she said, that " the prayer of faith shall 
 save the sick, in every case in which that 
 fulfilment was for the good of the sufferer, 
 and for the glory of God." 
 
 As who of us who calls himself a Christ- 
 ian does not ?
 
 A 14th-century New Woman 139 
 
 Furthermore, she " persuaded the pa- 
 tient to make a confession of sin, then 
 spoke peace to his conscience through faith 
 in Jesus Christ, and sought to inspire him 
 with a joyous courage and resolution." 
 No wiser regimen could have been carried 
 on in the plague-smitten city when men's 
 hearts were failing them for fear, the fear 
 that slew more than the pestilence. 
 
 She visited hardened criminals in their 
 prisons, going, fearlessly and alone, to 
 talk and pray with the most depraved of 
 these ; attended them to the scaffold and 
 received their dying testimony to the sav- 
 ing Faith she held and taught. 
 
 But the circumstance that set her apart 
 in a peculiar sense from others of her age 
 and sex at a time when marriage or the 
 cloister was the only choice granted to 
 women of every degree, was that the 
 Dominican Fathers, acceding to her cher- 
 ished desire to preach the Gospel of Christ, 
 actually commissioned her to act as an 
 Evangelist, and that public opinion sus- 
 tained her in the New Departure. She 
 maintained that her warrant for the bold
 
 140 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 innovation upon established customs, and 
 defiance of conventional prejudices, came 
 from a Higher Power than the ghostly 
 Fathers who had received her into the 
 third order of the Dominicans. I quote 
 from her answer to the Divine "leading" 
 sent in answer to her prayers : 
 
 " Lord ! not my will, but Thine, be 
 done ! for I am only darkness and Thou 
 art all light. . . . How can I, who 
 am so miserable and fragile, be useful to 
 my fellow-creatures ? My sex is an ob- 
 stacle, as Thou, Lord, knowest, as well 
 because it is contemptible in men's eyes, 
 as because propriety forbids me any free- 
 dom of converse with the other sex." 
 
 The struggle closed with her humble — 
 " Behold the handmaide?i of the Loi'd. Be 
 it unto me eveit as Thoii wilt ! " 
 
 In one of her many itineraries she ad- 
 dressed an audience of two thousand 
 people, " beseeching them, for the love 
 of Jesus, to be at peace with one another, 
 and to follow the banner of the Prince of 
 Peace." 
 
 " Peace " was the word ever upon her
 
 A 14th-century New Woman 14' 
 
 lips in that turbulent age. She reconciled 
 private citizens, families, religious fraterni- 
 ties, and political parties. She was sent 
 for to Florence, where she was the guest 
 of the Soderini family ; to Pisa, and was 
 met on the way by a wealthy merchant 
 with a " goodly company " of leading men 
 to conduct her and her friends to the 
 merchant's palace. From this place she 
 wrote " many letters on the affairs of the 
 Church and the Republics," . and there 
 conceived, and began to communicate to 
 prelate and soldier, the idea of the union 
 of all Christendom in a Crusade for the 
 recovery of Jerusalem from the hands of 
 the Turks. 
 
 Her most notable achievement was the 
 successful embassy, undertaken "at the 
 Divine command," to Pope Gregory XI. at 
 Avignon, the then Papal Court. Against 
 his own will, and in the teeth of fierce 
 opposition from the most influential party 
 at Court, this delicate woman of the peo- 
 ple wrought upon him, by argument and 
 pleadings, to restore the See to Rome, 
 and it became once more the seat of
 
 142 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 government As an example of her man- 
 ner of dealing with the Pontiff I give a 
 brief extract from her first letter to him : 
 
 " You will never reduce your subjects 
 to submission by the sword. . . . The 
 spirit of strife and the absence of virtue, 
 these are the two things which are causing 
 the Church to lose ground more and more. 
 If you wish to regain what you have lost, 
 your only means of doing so is to re- 
 trace your steps, and to reconquer your 
 lost dominions by the encouragement of 
 virtue and by peace. Pardon, beloved 
 Father, my presumptuous boldness." 
 
 A Roman Catholic writer says : " She 
 struck at the root of the evil, — the im- 
 morality of the clergy and the odious 
 government of the Papal legates." 
 
 In another letter she firmly and frankly 
 reminds the Pope that his prelates and 
 priests "are a thousand times more en- 
 tangled in the luxury and vanities of the 
 world than the laity ; for indeed, many of 
 the laity put the pastors to shame by their 
 pure and holy lives. . . . Open your 
 eyes, O Father, and see what these people
 
 A 14th Century New Vv^oman 143 
 
 are who are called apostles of the flock, 
 and how they devour the poor ; how their 
 souls are filled with greed and hatred, and 
 how they have made their bodies vessels 
 of every kind of abomination." 
 
 It is not easy in reading this and other 
 of her letters to credit that she taught her- 
 self to write after she was eighteen years 
 of age. Simple as an unspoiled child, 
 when she was the most famous woman in 
 all Italy, she liked best to be known as 
 " The Daughter of the Republic " and 
 " The Child of the People." Other and 
 loving epithets were showered upon her 
 by her townsmen. She was " Our Lady 
 of the Contrada d'Oca," " The People's 
 Catherine," " The Blessed Plebeian." Her 
 Meditations and her Philosophy, like her 
 epistles, are clear in diction, strong, and 
 even eloquent in style, and full of the pure 
 and lofty spirit she carried, like a charmed 
 treasure, in a violent, besotted, and licen- 
 tious age. 
 
 She died April 29, 1380, in Rome, spent 
 by the heroic effort to infuse purity and 
 true faith into a corrupt Church.
 
 H4 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 " Lord ! Thou callest me, and I go to 
 Thee ! Not on account of my merits, but 
 solely on account of Thy mercy ! " were 
 amonof her last words. 
 
 The list of her correspondents is a curi- 
 ous study. Among them were Florentine 
 jailors; Sienese prisoners; "an abominably 
 profligate man, name not mentioned " ; a 
 Jew usurer of immense wealth; John 
 Hawkwood, the English soldier of fortune ; 
 her "little niece, Jenny"; Gregory XI. 
 and his successor, Urban VI. ; Bernabos 
 Visconti, the tyrant Duke of Milan ; a 
 currier and his wife at Lucca ; Laurencio 
 di Pino, Professor of Law in the Univers- 
 ity of Bologna ; the Signoria of Siena, — 
 etc., etc., the roll embracing every rank in 
 society and half-a-dozen nationalities. 
 
 She "had most of her visions" in this 
 neglected chapel, unadorned to-day save 
 by such memories as we have conjured up. 
 She kneaded bread for the public poor 
 with her own hands and baked it in the 
 big, yawning oven we saw, this morning, 
 in the disused cellar of the Pensione di 
 Santa Caterina.
 
 A 14th Century New Woman 145 
 
 One of her sayings was, " Patience — the 
 touchstone of all the virtues." The sweet 
 saint and true woman, the counsellor of 
 princes, the confidante of weavers' wives, 
 — the uncomplaining invalid who made 
 of the pangs she belittled smilingly as 
 "gentle pains," so many rounds in the 
 ladder by which she neared the loftiest 
 type of Christian life, — had proved the 
 virtue of her touchstone.
 
 IX 
 
 THE GINEVRA TALE 
 
 147
 
 IX 
 THE GINEVRA TALE 
 
 '"T'HERE is no story so perfect as the 
 
 A Ginevra Tale." 
 
 Thus one, who, when we have made 
 allowance for inaccuracies, extravagance 
 of sentiment, and a floridness of style that 
 is often tawdry, gives us the very breath 
 and soul and light of Florence. 
 
 As a novel Pascarel is below criticism ; 
 historically, it is full of flaws. As a prose 
 poem, it brings us, wherever we may be 
 in body, face to face, heart to heart, with 
 the glorious mistress of the Arno, and 
 
 " With dreamful eyes. 
 The spirit lies, — " 
 
 not " under the walls of Paradise," but 
 dwells within the dear old streets, cool 
 with purple shadows in the hottest noon- 
 tide, and, morning, noon, and midnight, 
 149
 
 150 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 thronged with ghosts that are never laid. 
 I asked for the "perfect story" this 
 afternoon in a bookseller's shop, not a 
 hundred paces away from the Street of 
 the Dead ( Via della Morte) changed from 
 the Via del Campa7tile because of what 
 happened here, one night, in a Past that 
 is grey, but never decrepit. Scribe has 
 told it to us in a poem made almost trite 
 by average and amateur elocutionists. 
 Italian ballad-mongers count the versified 
 tale as a stock article, and it has been 
 put upon the stage in yet another, and 
 more meretricious, form. But there is no 
 printed authentic version of the romance 
 in detail. We have to go back to Boc- 
 caccio for the graphic outline of an event 
 which, for thrilling dramatic interest, casts 
 every other Florentine legend into the 
 shade. Boccaccio availed himself of it, 
 but did not invent it. 
 
 " But, yes, it is quite true. It is his- 
 tory, not tradition," said the bookseller, 
 surprised at our questioning. " She was 
 Ginevra degli Amieri. You will see from 
 that corner," — pointing through his door,
 
 The Ginevra Tale 151 
 
 — " the site of her husband's house in the 
 Co7'so dcgli Adimarz." 
 
 Instead of obeying the direction of his 
 finger, we have come to the Square of the 
 Duomo, and, recalHng the fact that the 
 door of the family vault in which the sup- 
 posed corpse was interred, was between 
 Cathedral and Campanile, we locate the 
 same to our satisfaction. " The lily of 
 Florence, blossoming in stone," the Cam- 
 panile of Giotto, "the model and mirror 
 of perfect architecture," was then unfin- 
 ished, a truncated shaft, and but a mass 
 of gloom in the darkness of the night, 
 when the affrighted creature struggled 
 back to life. All about the base of the 
 great Cathedral were tombs, and the Pi- 
 azza was paved with lettered slabs, shut 
 down fast upon burial-vaults. The rest- 
 ing-places of their dead were but care- 
 lessly guarded by their rich citizens who 
 had the right to lay their kindred here. 
 The tomb of the Medici in the Church of 
 San Lorenzo, for four centuries, had no se- 
 curer protection from grave-robbers than 
 wooden doors and common bolts and hasps.
 
 152 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 Ginevra Amieri, in love with one man, 
 was married to another by the will of her 
 patrician father. "He preferred Fran- 
 cesco Agolanti to Antonio Rondinelli, 
 because he" — Agolanti — "was of noble 
 family," says Boccaccio. Also, that Gi- 
 nevra " could never be reconciled to the 
 marriage that was arranged for her." She 
 had been the wife of Agolanti several years, 
 when she fell ill, and, sinking into a sort 
 of cataleptic trance, was pronounced dead 
 by the physicians. The hasty interment 
 customary at that day in Italy took place 
 within twenty-four hours ; the stone was 
 lowered to its place over the mouth of the 
 crypt, and the mourners went their ways 
 to their homes. 
 
 It was midnight when Ginevra awoke. 
 She lay in an open niche, dressed in grave- 
 clothes ; her wrists were bound firmly in 
 the form of a cross upon her breast, and 
 she knew the stifling blackness of the place 
 to be that of the charnel-house. As soon 
 as the horror of the truth let her use her 
 senses, she untied the ribbon from her 
 wrists, groped her way to the steps lead-
 
 ir^ i
 
 The Ginevra Tale 153 
 
 ing to the upper world, and exerted all her 
 strength to raise the stone laid over the 
 entrance to the vault, succeeding finally 
 in sliding it far enough aside to allow the 
 passage of her body. Her only garment 
 was her shroud ; her feet were bare. Put- 
 ting out her hands in the obscurity, she 
 could feel on one side the cold stones of 
 the Cathedral, on the other the marbles 
 of the Campanile, and guided her course 
 by these into the unlighted streets. Still 
 feeling her way past the headquarters of 
 the Misericordia, — and, we may hope, 
 gleaning courage from the thought of the 
 love and mercy of man to his suffering 
 fellows, typified by the Order, — she en- 
 tered the narrow way that now commem- 
 orates her sorrowful wanderings, and 
 emerged into the street on which stood 
 her home. 
 
 The husband, who believed himself a 
 widower, was sleeping — we charitably sup- 
 pose — " for sorrow." Awakened by the 
 irregular knocking upon the lower door, 
 he looked from the window and asked 
 who was there. A feeble voice answered
 
 154 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 with his wife's name. In the disorder of 
 wits produced by the abrupt awakening 
 and the shock of the supernatural visita- 
 tion, he cast one glance below, and see- 
 ing the glimmer of white garments, cried 
 out to the spirit to begone, shut the 
 casement in deadly terror, and fell to 
 saying his prayers, lest wood and stone 
 might not avail to exclude the bodiless 
 intruder. 
 
 Her father lived in the Mercato Vecchio. 
 That most picturesque antique of Flor- 
 ence has been demolished and swept away 
 by the besom of Sanitary Reform. We are 
 not at a loss, however, as to the site of 
 the Amieri house. It was so near the 
 Church of S. Andrea that the terrified 
 parent might have bethought himself of 
 the comparative security from diabolical 
 intrusions afforded by the vicinity of the 
 sanctuary. But one look from his iron- 
 grated lattice at the shivering Thing that 
 cried to him in Ginevra's voice to let her 
 in, drove every thought from his mind ex- 
 cept the frantic desire to exorcise the lying 
 devil, or ghost. He shrieked to her to go
 
 The Ginevra Tale 155 
 
 away, and bolted his window against her 
 sobs and entreaties. 
 
 We return upon the imaginary trail 
 left by her bleeding feet over the rough 
 stones, to the Via Caizaiolt, now one of 
 the noisiest of the narrow throats of 
 Florentine traffic, — on that night as still 
 as the tomb the deserted woman had 
 left, and wellnigh as gloomy, a deep 
 well, between lofty houses whose pro- 
 jecting eaves almost met above her 
 head. 
 
 In the porch of S. Bartolommeo, an old 
 church even then, she laid her down, chilled 
 to the bone and heart, spent and despair- 
 ing, and prayed for death, as, a little while 
 before, she had prayed for strength to 
 hold the life given back to her. 
 
 "Then," says the simple story, "she re- 
 membered her beloved Rondinelli, who 
 had always proved faithful to her." 
 
 Remembered him ! What woman who 
 lives and has ever loved and been loved, 
 will believe that she had forgotten him for 
 one instant after she knew that she was still 
 in the same world with him ? I have, never-
 
 156 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 theless, always been glad, in my secret 
 soul, that Ginevra went, first of all, to the 
 husband whose she was by the law of 
 the land, her Church, and her con- 
 science. Dizzied though she was by ill- 
 ness and fright, the faintness of dying 
 and the shock of coming back to life, her 
 instinct of honour and right held fast. 
 Her solemn vows had been plighted to 
 Francesco Agolanti, and death had not, 
 after all, parted them. Where he was, 
 was home, and to that asylum she sped, 
 with never a thought of seeking any 
 other. 
 
 One variation of the tale sends her to 
 the house of an uncle, after her father had 
 driven her from his door. This kinsman 
 lived in the Mercato Vecchio, not far from 
 the home of her girlhood. He, too, had 
 repulsed her with horror and loathing, 
 before she crawled, like a shot dove, into 
 the church-porch to die. 
 
 We are gratified by the circumstance 
 that the street into which w^e next direct 
 our steps still bears tlu; name of Rondi- 
 nelli. Since his was not a noble house.
 
 The Ginevra Tale 157 
 
 and therefore low-esteemed in the eyes of 
 haughty Bernardo Amieri, it is hardly 
 likely, or so we reason, that the thorough- 
 fare was called after his forefathers. We 
 choose to synchronise the re-christening 
 with that of the Via del Campanile — from 
 that night and forevermore, the Via della 
 Movie — and make the change one of the 
 scores of memorials to faithful love and 
 heroic endeavour the ancient Florentines 
 delighted to honour, and to bequeath to 
 prosaic generations following. 
 
 The actual abode of Antonio Rondi- 
 nelli was razed to the ground centuries 
 ago. We do not require the help of stone 
 walls and barred windows and the heavy 
 lower door against which the fainting 
 woman sank, after one feeble knock upon 
 the panels, in our reproduction of the 
 scene. Antonio did not sleep that night. 
 At last, after years of hopeless separation, 
 his love was again all his, in the spirit that 
 had never truly belonged to Agolanti. 
 He might dream and think of her now, 
 without sin. Without so much as a 
 thought of wrong, her freed soul might
 
 158 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 commune with his. Through all the 
 years of the Eternity in which he would, 
 one day, rejoin her, they would live and 
 love together. Aroused by the low rap- 
 ping at his door from musings sweet and 
 welcome as visions from that Blessed 
 Land — so much the more blessed because 
 of her dwelling therein — he called to the 
 unseen visitor : 
 
 "Who is there?" 
 
 ** It is I — Ginevra ! " 
 
 It was scarcely a surprise. That she 
 should speak to him was as natural as her 
 comintj to him in the beautiful dreams that 
 had held his eyes waking. 
 
 There is a book-mark in our worn copy 
 of Pascarel. We open at that page and 
 read, leaning against the wall of Rondi- 
 nelli's house. The beat of passing feet 
 upon the sidewalk, the roar of wheels and 
 click of hoofs, gay shop-windows and cas- 
 ual and curious glances, — are the dream. 
 The cold night, the form at the open case- 
 ment bending to listen to the faint accents 
 from below, the drooping figure, prone 
 on the earth, vague and dim, as if her
 
 The Ginevra Tale 159 
 
 empty shroud had been tossed into the 
 deep embrasure of the doorway, — these 
 are the real things with which we have 
 to do. 
 
 We do not read aloud. Yet the air 
 stirs and throbs with words we hear, rather 
 than see : 
 
 " Then, at last, the lover's threshold, 
 the timid 3ummons of despair, the open 
 door, the instant welcome ; not a doubt, 
 not a question, not a fear. Living or dead, 
 of heaven or of hell — what matter which ? 
 
 " What matter whence she came ? 
 
 "What matter what she brought? 
 
 " Welcome, thrice welcome, as flowers 
 in the May-time. 
 
 " . . . And it was all true, too, here, 
 in this Via della MorteT 
 
 " His parents," we have read elsewhere, 
 " cared for her tenderly, and she was soon 
 restored to health." 
 
 The mother, from whom the son got 
 his faithful heart, is the actor that com- 
 pletes the group for us. Her gentle hands 
 were busy with the wanderer, no longer 
 homeless, when she awoke from her
 
 i6o Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 swoon ; In her safe and honourable keep- 
 ing her son's love remained until she be- 
 came his wife. 
 
 Scribe, and Italian "Walks" and " Saun- 
 terings," bring us down from the supreme 
 height of sympathetic interest by going 
 into the minutiae of the solemn absurdity 
 of the decision arrived at by Church 
 Courts. To wit : that Madonna Ginevra 
 Agolanti, having died officially, and been 
 interred in good and regular order, eccle- 
 siastically, was now not, henceforth, and 
 for all time. Furthermore, that the mar- 
 riaofe-contract between her and Messer 
 Francesco Agolanti was legally dissolved 
 by her decease, and hereafter not binding 
 upon either party. This decreed, it was 
 no concern of the solemn owl, the State 
 Church, what happened to either of them, 
 thereafter. Messer Francesco was free to 
 take unto himself another wife, and neither 
 the Holy Father of Rome nor the Signoria 
 of the Florentine Republic had jurisdic- 
 tion over a ghost. 
 
 To us, the Perfect Tale is rounded to a 
 faultless close with the opening of that
 
 The Ginevra Tale 
 
 i6i 
 
 door ; the lifting- of the helpless woman 
 from the threshold of Antonio Rondi- 
 nelli's door, in his strong arms, and to his 
 faithful bosom. 
 
 " And it was all true, too, here, in this 
 Via della Morte ! "
 
 X 
 
 JOHN KEATS IN ROME 
 
 163
 
 X 
 
 JOHN KEATS IN ROME 
 
 THE Spanish Steps are as well known 
 to the tourist in Rome as St. Peter's 
 Church. At the top of the stately flight 
 is the Church of San Trinita del Monte, 
 her twin towers rising light and strong 
 against the sky. At the foot is the Fon- 
 tana della Barca, a landmark of great and 
 uncertain age. The gentle babble of the 
 playing waters, unheard a dozen paces 
 away when the fashionable din of the Pi- 
 azza di Spagna is at its loudest, is distinct 
 to the nocturnal lounger upon the upper- 
 most landing of the stone stairway. 
 
 It rises in broken, musical whispers to 
 the open window of a second-story front 
 room of "the first house on the right, as 
 you ascend the steps of the Trinity del 
 Monte." 
 
 165
 
 1 66 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 This was Joseph Severn's description of 
 the lodgings hired for himself and his in- 
 valid friend John Keats, by an English 
 physician resident in Rome. The two 
 young men arrived in Rome in mid-No- 
 vember, 1820. After the first week of 
 December Keats never quitted this cham- 
 ber. " An accursed lodging-place," Severn 
 calls it when he had to spend his last crown 
 to save his dying companion from eject- 
 ment into the street. " If he dies," he adds, 
 "all the beds and furniture will be burnt 
 and the walls scraped, and they will come 
 on me for a hundred crowns or more." 
 
 Again, he inveighs savagely against 
 " this comfortless Italy, this wilderness of 
 a place for an invalid." 
 
 The lodging-place is not comfortless as 
 we see it. The room is clean, spacious 
 and well furnished, one of a suite occupied 
 by a highly respectable family. The lo- 
 cation is airy and central, and far more ex- 
 pensive now than when it was let to the 
 two forestieri, seventy-eight winters ago. 
 It is, nevertheless, easy to picture it as dis- 
 mally unhomelike and inadequate to the
 
 John Keats in Rome 167 
 
 necessities of tenants accustomed to the 
 comforts of their native England. Decent 
 furniture, fire, and food both dainty and 
 nutritious, were to be had in the Italy of 
 that date for money, and there were enough 
 English residents in the Eternal City to 
 make up a pleasant circle for themselves. 
 Keats had come to Rome, " his last place 
 of torture and of rest," upon borrowed 
 money. Severn, an artist of promise, — 
 abundantly fulfilled in after-life — had re- 
 ceived a gold medal for a picture exhibi- 
 ted in the Royal Academy, and, with it, 
 an honorarium in value sufficient to de- 
 fray the costs of three years' study in Italy. 
 To the Circle aforesaid they were utterly 
 unknown. Besides their physician and his 
 kind wife, who sent broths and jellies to 
 her husband's patient, they had few ac- 
 quaintances, and apparently no active 
 friends in the city. 
 
 The comrades had been friends for seven 
 years, and, since the setting-in of Keats's 
 mortal malady, intimates. Severn's ad- 
 miration of Keats as the embodiment of 
 the artist's "complete idea of a poet," and
 
 1 68 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 genuine fondness for the ardent, wayward 
 genius, were deepened by a peculiar ele- 
 ment of tenderness in the nature of the 
 stalwart elder of the twain — a yearning 
 over hurt and helpless things, which drew 
 out his whole soul in pity for the unhappy 
 boy. For, Keats, small of stature and 
 delicate of feature, with glorious eyes that 
 filled with tears, and sensitive lips that 
 trembled like a child's, at a sudden rush 
 of thought or emotion, although but two 
 years Severn's junior, looked, at twenty- 
 five, a mere lad beside him. 
 
 During the two months passed by them 
 in this chamber, the duties of the devoted 
 attendant were manifold and incongruous. 
 But for the cheerful heroism of his affec- 
 tion for the object of these cares, they 
 would have irked him past endurance. 
 He had hoped to send another picture to 
 the Academy this winter, and to push for- 
 ward vigorously the studies he had come 
 to Rome to prosecute. His easel leaned 
 idly against the wall ; palette, brushes and 
 paints were not unpacked. He was Keats's 
 nurse by day and his sole watcher by night.
 
 John Keats in Rome 169 
 
 Rising in the raw dawn of wintry morn- 
 ings, he kindled the fire and always pre- 
 pared his friend's breakfast with his own. 
 Sometimes he cooked all their meals after 
 buying the materials for the same ; he 
 made beds, and swept the stone floor ; 
 " sat by the bedside and read all day, and 
 at night humoured him in all his wander- 
 ings," his heart aching with loving com- 
 passion that left no room for complaint 
 of his own disappointment and privations. 
 
 When the sick man, frenzied by fever 
 and nervous irritability, leaped out of bed, 
 declaring, " This day shall be my last ! " 
 the guardian gathered him in his strong 
 arms, as he might lift a fretful baby, and 
 laid him upon the pillows, wiped the bright 
 blood from the poor, white lips, and petted 
 and soothed him into comparative quiet. 
 
 On February 14, Severn wrote to Mrs. 
 Brawne of the " great quietness and peace " 
 that had succeeded the fearful unrest of 
 many weeks. 
 
 "It seems like a delightful sleep to me. 
 / have been tossing about in the tempest of 
 his 77iind for so lo7ig ! "
 
 I70 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 The simple phrase holds a volume of 
 meaning, a depth and completeness of un- 
 selfish sympathy, such as is given to few 
 men to inspire, or to feel. 
 
 The sovereign commonwealth of read- 
 ers and the oligarchy of reviewers have, 
 since then, done full credit to the genius 
 of John Keats. From the day he left his 
 cradle to that in which Joseph Severn laid 
 to rest in a foreign land the shattered 
 frame from which the lungs had wasted 
 entirely away, two months earlier, he had 
 never a sane mind in a sane body. His 
 biographers throw away time in disputing 
 whether or not Byron wrote the truth in 
 declaring that the poet's life was " snuffed 
 out by an article." His brother's summing 
 up of the lamentable case covered more 
 and tenable ground : 
 
 ''Blackwood and The Quarterly, asso- 
 ciated with our family disease, consump- 
 tion, were ministers of death sufficiently 
 venomous, cruel, and deadly to have con- 
 signed one of less sensibility to a prema- 
 ture grave." 
 
 The seeds of death were implanted in
 
 John Keats in Rome 17^ 
 
 his constitution by his mother. From her 
 he drew, also, his sensuous temperament, 
 his intolerance of pain and the capacity 
 for loving and suffering with fierce unrea- 
 son that hurried on the inevitable end. 
 *' The horrid morbidity" he deplores in a 
 rational hour, finally ate into and con- 
 sumed his heart. How much of this was 
 due to ill-health, how much to "venom- 
 ous " critics, and how little to natural lack 
 of balance and to undisciplined passion, is 
 a nice question which, it seems to us, is 
 best settled by his latest biographer, Wil- 
 liam Michael Rossetti. His Life of Keats 
 is our pocket companion in the silent up- 
 per chamber where torture ceased, and 
 rest began. 
 
 Fanny Brawne was a poor creature upon 
 which to stake love and life, and Keats 
 knew this to be true in the lucid intervals 
 of his infatuation. Rossetti gives the key 
 to the wretched entanglement in two judi- 
 cial lines : 
 
 "He was in a state of feeling propense 
 to love. Some woman was required to fill 
 the void in his heart,"
 
 172 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 For a while after her Image was pro- 
 jected upon the sensitised surface, he could 
 play with it coolly. In a letter to his 
 brother, he catalogues certain physical 
 traits of Miss Brawne's, as " good," others, 
 " tolerable," one or two as " bad-ish." 
 " She wants sentiment in every feature " ; 
 as to mind, she is " ignorant," in deport- 
 ment, " monstrous," and " a minx." Almost 
 as soon as this letter could reach Louis- 
 ville, Kentucky, where the George Keatses 
 lived, the lover swears to his frivolous 
 divinity : — " From the very first week I 
 knew you I wrote myself your vassal," and 
 "all I can bring you is a swooning admir- 
 ation of your beauty." 
 
 Naturally suspicious, and made more 
 misanthropic by the hidden fires of his 
 disease, he never trusted her for a single 
 hour. He had read her too well, and re- 
 collected too faithfully the many evidences 
 she had given him of lightness of mind 
 and greed of admiration. After sickness 
 made him prisoner and kept him absent 
 from her, he was " torn by ideas of her 
 volatility, and fickleness," and hated, while
 
 John Keats in Rome 173 
 
 he hugged, his chains. Her flirtations 
 with Charles Armitage Brown, of whom 
 Keats writes at this very time — " I know 
 his love and friendship for me " — drove 
 him to coarseness of accusation. '* I see 
 nothing but thorns for the future," says 
 the last letter penned to Fanny before his 
 journey southward. " Wherever I may 
 be next winter, in Italy — or nowhere — 
 Brown will be living near you with his 
 indecencies. I see no prospect of any rest. 
 Suppose me in Rome. I should there 
 see you, as in a magic glass, going to and 
 from town at all hours 
 
 " I wish I could infuse a little confidence 
 of human nature into my heart. I cannot 
 muster any. The world is too brutal for 
 me. I am glad there is such a thing as 
 the erave ! I am sure I shall never have 
 any rest till I get there. . . . 
 
 " I wish I was either in your arms, full 
 of faith, or that a thunderbolt would strike 
 me dead ! " 
 
 If anything could heighten the profound 
 pity, and the regret that nearly trenches 
 upon repulsion with which we read these
 
 174 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 ravings, it would be another letter, ad- 
 dressed by the lover when actually en 
 voyage, to the man of whose " indecencies " 
 he had complained to his betrothed. 
 
 " I think " — run the sentences dictated 
 by the calm sorrow of his then mood — 
 " for my sake, you would be a friend to 
 Miss Brawne when I am dead. You think 
 she has many faults. For my sake think 
 she has not one. It there is anything you 
 can do for her by word or deed, I know 
 you will do it. . . . 
 
 " The thought of leaving Miss Brawne 
 is beyond everything horrible — the sense 
 of darkness coming over me — I eternally 
 see her figure, eternally vanishing. Some 
 of the phrases she was in the habit of 
 using during my last nursing in Went- 
 worth Place " (the Brawnes' home in 
 Hampstead) " ring in my ears. Is there 
 another life ? Shall I awake and find all 
 this a dream ? There must be. We can- 
 not be created for this sort of suffering. 
 The receiving this letter is to be one of 
 yours." 
 
 A passionate, pessimistic boy, in whom
 
 John Keats in Rome 175 
 
 earthly suffering was never to work out 
 the Divine purpose, or to yield the peace- 
 able fruits of self-control and charity, he 
 fought with death as he had fought with 
 a life that seemed all wrong to his per- 
 verted perceptions. He would not read 
 Fanny Brawne's letters when Severn 
 brought them to his bed. A glance at the 
 last that reached him "tore him to pieces." 
 He charged Severn to see that it was put 
 into his cofhn, with one from his sister; 
 then countermanded the order, so far as it 
 related to the letter from his betrothed. 
 
 Days of "doubt and horror" dragged 
 on, and sleepless nights, during which the 
 horrible suffocation that threatened death 
 a thousand times before its merciful com- 
 ing, obliged him to have the windows 
 open, letting in — as we reflect, with a 
 a fleeting sense of thankfulness — the plash 
 and tinkle of the fountain in the square 
 below, and the call, " Severn, — I am dy- 
 ing ! " hastened the faithful watcher to his 
 side. For the last time the strong arms 
 lifted him up. 
 
 " Don't be frightened ! Be firm, and
 
 176 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 thank God it has come ! " are the words 
 the loving^ scribe must have recorded with 
 more than gratitude — with sorrowful pride 
 in the rally of whatever was brave and 
 manly in the pitiful wreck that went to 
 pieces upon his constant heart. 
 
 So close to our window that we could 
 touch it by leaning over the sill is a tab- 
 let, in the outer wall of the house, telling 
 who died here, and when. 
 
 " In a room," says a fellow-student with 
 him in the medical college, " Keats was al- 
 ways at the window peering out into space, 
 and it was customary to call the window- 
 seat ' Keats's place.' " 
 
 He must have been propped in his chair 
 often, to sit at the casement overlooking 
 the Piazza di Spagna, on the sunny days 
 which, we hope, were many in the winter 
 of 1 820-1 82 1. Severn may have brought 
 him into the sunlight in his arms to let 
 him "peer" into the glad, free space with- 
 out his prison, or at midnight, in the hope 
 of lesseninof the horrible unrest of fever 
 and asphyxia by a sight of the " patient 
 stars
 
 John Keats in Rome 177 
 
 Who climb each night the ancient sky." 
 
 We pause for a last look at the corner 
 in which Keats's bed used to stand, then 
 go silently down the stairs that gave back 
 the slow echoes of the bearers' tread when 
 the pitifully light weight of his mortal re- 
 mains was removed for their long rest. 
 
 " I followed his dear body to the grave 
 on Monday, February 26," wrote Severn 
 to Fanny Brawne's mother. " The letters 
 I placed in the cofhn with my own 
 hand." 
 
 The order to keep back the last re- 
 ceived from Miss Brawne had been re- 
 voked. Others, also unread, received from 
 her in previous weeks, went into the coffin 
 with it, and one from his only sister. 
 
 " I long to believe in immortality," he 
 had told his betrothed, " I shall never be 
 able to bid you an entire farewell." 
 
 And, ao;ain — '* I wish to believe in im- 
 mortality ! I wish to live with you forever." 
 
 We can imagine that the pulseless heart 
 would quicken with one last painful throb 
 as the unread letters were laid upon it. 
 
 In our thoughtful drive to the Protest-
 
 178 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 ant Cemetery, we try to banish the recol- 
 lection of the story that Miss Brawne could 
 speak, in after years, flippantly, and with 
 patronising compassion more dishonouring 
 to his memory than open ridicule — of 
 " John Keats, the foolish young poet who 
 was in love with me." 
 
 She was, moreover, not averse to the 
 measure of distinction that fell to her lot 
 as the object of this mad folly, after read- 
 ers and reviewers awoke to the perception 
 of his glorious gifts, and the loss the world 
 had sustained when his life flickered out 
 in discomfort and despair. Even after her 
 marriage to another man, she kept Keats's 
 letters. She had never understood why 
 he shrank from talking of their betrothal 
 to common acquaintances ; his resentment 
 of his friends' " spying upon a secret I 
 would rather die than share with anybody's 
 confidence," was silly, and even unkind, in 
 her estimation. 
 
 " Good gods ! " he breaks out, fiercely. 
 " What a shame it is our loves should be 
 so put into the microscope of a coterie ! 
 Their ' laughs ' should not affect you,
 
 John Keats in Rome 179 
 
 when in competition with one, who, if he 
 never should see you again, would make 
 you the saint of his memory." 
 
 From which, and other expressions, we 
 learn that Miss Brawne's associates had 
 twitted her with her lover's proud reticence 
 upon the theme sacred to him, and any- 
 thing but sacred to her. 
 
 " That is arterial blood ! That drop is 
 my death-warrant ! " was his verdict at sight 
 of his first hemorrhage. 
 
 The same may be said of every word in 
 these terrible love-letters. Each is a drop 
 of life-blood, and their leap from the an- 
 guished heart actually appalls us. No 
 eyes but hers should ever have rested upon 
 the pages. It was nothing short of vivi- 
 section for her to turn them over to public 
 examination and judgment. And this was 
 done, in effect, by her preservation of them, 
 aware as she was, what use would be made 
 of them when they escaped from her keep- 
 ing. 
 
 We cannot, and we do not care to, for- 
 give her. She outlived her madly-mistaken 
 lover by forty-four years, dying in peace-
 
 i8o Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 ful respectability, a British matron of years, 
 in 1865. 
 
 Long before that, Endymion, The Pot of 
 Basil, and Lamia took their eternal place 
 among the choicest of English classics, and 
 The Eve of St. Agnes was hung in the 
 mental galleries of scholarly critics as the 
 divinest bit of word-painting in the Eng- 
 lish language. The movement of the poem 
 is a luxury to ear and imagination, — liquid 
 melody, — " a delicate transfusion of sight 
 and emotion into sound," Rossetti says, 
 aptly and eloquently. " The Eve of St. 
 Agnes is, par excelleiice, the poem of 
 glamour." 
 
 Glamour that holds brain and senses in 
 delicious captivity. The mere repetition 
 of each perfect line is a definite delight ; 
 imagery and description are a chaplet of 
 flawless gems. 
 
 ** Among the many things he has re- 
 quested of me to-night this is the principal 
 — that on his grave shall be this — ' Here 
 lies one whose name is writ in water,' " — is 
 an entry in the diary Severn sent to Mrs. 
 Brawne.
 
 John Keats in Rome i8i 
 
 In obeying the harrowing injunction, 
 the faithful executor prefaced it by a sen- 
 tence that shows his own hot sympathy 
 with the hounded poet : 
 
 " This grave contains all that was mor- 
 tal of a young English poet, who, on his 
 death-bed, in the bitterness of his heart at 
 the malicious power of his enemies, de- 
 sired these words to be engraved on 
 his tomb-stone : — ' Hei^e lies one whose 
 name was writ in water' February 24, 
 1821." 
 
 It was in a gentler mood, perhaps in the 
 " great quietness and peace " that fell upon 
 him in the last week of his life, like a pre- 
 sage of the everlasting rest, that he whis- 
 pered one night when Severn thought him 
 asleep, — "/ feel the daisies growing over 
 me ! 
 
 They lift their innocent eyes to ours 
 from his breast, and overrun the turf on 
 all sides. Shelley had seen them before 
 he wrote in the Adonais which is an im- 
 mortal tribute to his dead friend : 
 
 " Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead 
 Thy footsteps to a slope of green access,
 
 1 82 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 Where, like an infant's smile over the dead, 
 A light of laughing flowers along the grass is 
 spread." 
 
 It is not possible to pause at this point 
 in the repetition of the exquisite lines, 
 when we say them, here and thus : 
 
 " And gray walls moulder round on which dull 
 
 Time 
 Feeds, like a slow fire upon a hoary brand ; 
 And one keen pyramid, with wedge sublime, 
 Pavilioning the dust of him who planned 
 This refuge for his memory, doth stand. 
 Like flame transformed to marble ; and beneath 
 A field is spread, on which a newer band 
 Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of 
 
 death. 
 Welcoming him we love with scarce extinguished 
 
 breath." 
 
 Hardy English ivies, lush from the 
 warmth of southern soil, bind the grave 
 of Keats to that of his leal, heroic friend, 
 Joseph Severn, who rejoined him in 1879. 
 
 Shelley's heart, plucked, unconsumed, 
 from his ashes, by Trelawney, after the 
 cremation at Spezzia, was brought to 
 Rome and buried in the newer cemetery 
 of which the city wall is the boundary. Tre- 
 lawney, his henchman, parasite, and biog-
 
 John Keats in Rome 183 
 
 rapher, was, at his especial and most charac- 
 teristic request, laid beside Shelley's tomb. 
 
 There had been some talk of Keats's 
 wintering with the Shelleys at Pisa, and, 
 after the project was given up, Shelley 
 had still the kindly intention " to be the 
 physician both of his body and of his 
 soul — to keep the one warm, and to teach 
 the other Greek and Spanish." 
 
 Violets spread a purple pall over Shel- 
 ley's heart ; rose-thickets, full of bursting 
 buds, cast wavering shadows upon the 
 " Cor Cordiuni " of his memorial-stone. 
 
 " It is enough to make one in love with 
 death to think of sleeping in so sweet a 
 spot," — he had said, with no prevision of 
 what we are looking upon, now. 
 
 " The weariness, the fever and the fret, 
 Here, where men sit and hear each other groan, 
 Where palsy shakes a few sad, last gray hairs, 
 Where youth grows pale and spectre-dim, and 
 dies — ' 
 
 — are over, and forever, for them both, 
 thank God ! and in the world that sets 
 this right. 
 
 'Keats's Ode to a Nightingale.
 
 XII. 
 TOLD ON THE LAGOON. 
 
 185
 
 
 
 
 XI. 
 TOLD ON THE LAGOON. 
 
 A SMALL steamer runs — or creeps — 
 to Torcello three times a week. It 
 churns up the stagnant water of the 
 shallow inlets, thrust like sickly fingers 
 into the salt marshes of the lonely island, 
 and is moored against the blackish rocks 
 abutting what was once a broad and busy 
 square. It is now a meadow, dotted, in 
 the springtime, with the white starry 
 flower we call, in our home across the sea, 
 the " Star-of-Bethlehem." 
 
 Beyond the meadow is a group of build- 
 ings, partly in ruins. The little church 
 dedicated to Santa Fosca, was built more 
 than twelve hundred years ago, by the 
 fugitives from Altinum, after the burning 
 of their town by the Lombards. Landing 
 upon the island of Torcello, they founded 
 187
 
 1 88 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 there a veritable city of refuge. To the 
 same date belongs the Campanile which 
 first catches the eyes strained across the 
 lagoon for a sight of the clustered ruins 
 and the Cathedral, post-dating them by 
 two centuries. 
 
 The pivotal point of the story to which 
 we listen in our seven-mile voyage, is this 
 Cathedral, erected — as nearly as can be 
 estimated, by consulting the confused 
 chronological tables of those early days — 
 about 1040. The foundations were laid 
 in those of an earlier church, the work of 
 the Altinese. 
 
 Shrinking from the prospect of seeing 
 Torcello — '' sui generis for simplicity and 
 solitude " — in company with a horde of 
 chattering " trippers," we have hired a 
 gondola to take us thither. The lagoon 
 just breathes, and in slow, leisurely heav- 
 ings, under the clear gray heavens re- 
 flected in its bosom. There is no glare, 
 and the gentle stir of the air saves the day 
 from sultriness ; there is not another gon- 
 dola within speaking distance. Behind us 
 is Venice, gradually losing outline and col-
 
 Told on the Lagoon 189 
 
 our in blending with the pearl-gray hori- 
 zon. 
 
 " Beautiful Venice, Bride of the Sea ! " 
 
 A girl, who must have learned the old, 
 old ballad from her grandmother's music- 
 books, was singing it in a flexible mezzo- 
 soprano on the Lagoon last night, under 
 the full moon. Other voices made the 
 chorus a part-song. The mellow har- 
 monies are with us still : 
 
 " Beautiful Venice ! City of Song ! 
 What wonders of old to thy regions belong ! 
 What sweet recollections cling to my heart 
 As thy fast-fading shores from my vision depart. 
 Oh, Poesy's home is thy light colonnade 
 
 Where the winds gently sigh and the sweet twi- 
 lights fade. 
 I have known many homes, but the dwelling for 
 me 
 Is Beautiful Venice, the Bride of the Sea ! " 
 
 The ripple and languorous swing of the 
 melody must have been thought out by 
 the composer on such a night, and under 
 such a moon, and upon such waters as re- 
 called it to the girl with the sympathetic 
 mezzo-soprano voice. All unwittingly she
 
 iQO Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 made us her grateful debtors. The words 
 are not poetry ; the air is not music. Yet 
 we account it of more value than a hundred 
 modern canzoncttas and barcaroles. 
 
 The retrospective murmur of the re- 
 frain is the prelude to our Story. 
 
 It begins in the bewitching old way — 
 Once upon a Time. The Once and the 
 Time are as worn and discoloured by the 
 wash of centuries as the rocks of the ru- 
 ined quay, but as firm as the piles driven 
 into the heart of the earth and upbearing 
 the Campanile, Duomo and Baptistery of 
 the waste Island City. 
 
 In that Once of the thousand-year-old 
 Time, Orseoli, Doge of Venice, wrought 
 for her fame and power exceeding all that 
 his predecessors had gained. Under his 
 leadership the Bride of the Adriatic be- 
 came the Queen of every sea ploughed by 
 her victorious galleys, and their range 
 comprised all of the known world. Kings 
 came bending unto her, and those who 
 had despised her youth and poverty, 
 bowed at her white feet, and all men 
 spoke well of her greatest Captain and
 
 Told on the Lagoon 191 
 
 wisest ruler. Heaven had set the seal of 
 Divine favor upon his works and ways by 
 giving him a large family of noble sons 
 and virtuous daughters. The heir appar- 
 ent, Giovanni, a brave and accomplished 
 youth, was invited to Constantinople by 
 the Emperors, Basil and Constantine, and 
 was there married to one of the Royal 
 house. After he brought her to Venice 
 " with great pomp and festivity," he was 
 associated with his father in the gfovern- 
 ment of the State, an appointment that 
 made yet more stable the throne estab- 
 lished upon the seas, and apparently as 
 stable as the girdle of snow-topped Alps 
 bounding the north-western horizon of the 
 Great Republic. 
 
 Next to Giovanni among the Doge's 
 sons, stood Orso, the scholar /^r eminence 
 in a household where all were emulous in 
 learning, and patrons of the fine arts. His 
 choice of the priesthood as a sphere for his 
 talents and ambitions, was not opposed by 
 the father. He had, besides Giovanni, an- 
 other son. Otto, to make the succession 
 sure, even after the youngest, Vitale, had
 
 192 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 also gone into holy orders, and a daugh- 
 ter, for whom the Emperor Otto 11. had 
 stood godfather in San Marco, determined 
 to take the veil. The Church was the 
 twin of the State in dignity and authority. 
 When Orso was made Bishop of the isl- 
 and-parish of Torcello — the Torcello ac- 
 knowledged and revered as the Mother of 
 Venice — the Doge smiled, well-pleased, 
 upon the zeal with which the new incum- 
 bent set about rebuilding her Cathedral in 
 a style so far surpassing its earlier estate 
 that nothing in Venice approached it in 
 design and execution. Had the veined 
 marble pillars, combining with Corinthian 
 capitals reminiscences of the Byzantium 
 that was ever the loving ally of the Orse- 
 oli ; the exquisitely wrought rood-screen, 
 copied, in part, by the architects of San 
 Marco, dividing the choir from the body of 
 the church, and the Episcopal throne, or 
 Bishop's Seat, commanding the whole in- 
 terior, been the work of Orso's own hands, 
 he could have left us no more definite ex- 
 pression of his mind, character, and tastes. 
 All is noble, pure, and elevated. In the
 
 Told on the Lagoon 193 
 
 minutest detail we discern the singleness 
 of devotion to his high calling and to his 
 diocese which changed desolation into a 
 miracle of beauty. 
 
 About the Cathedral group sprang up 
 and flourished a miniature realm informed 
 by his energy and refinement. 
 
 " Behind the high altar, on the Bishop's 
 high cold throne overlooking the great tem- 
 ple, he sat among his presbyters and con- 
 trolled the counsels and led the decisions 
 of a community then active and wealthy," 
 says a careful chronicler. 
 
 While Torcello, thus transformed, was 
 to him wife, child, and kingdom, his inter- 
 course with father and brothers was always 
 close and tender. The old Doge took 
 counsel with this, his gravest and most ju- 
 dicious son, in affairs of state. When the 
 plague fell, like a black frost from heaven, 
 upon prosperous Venice, blighting, among 
 the first victims, Giovanni, his wife and 
 their baby-boy, Orso's strong heart was his 
 father's stay ; his clear brain was ready 
 with a measure that should effectually 
 
 avert the calamity of panic and anarchy. 
 13
 
 194 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 Otto, the Doge's third son, was the 
 protcgd oi Otto II., whose visit, incognito, 
 to Pietro Orseoli, the great Doge, is one 
 of the romantic incidents of Venetian his- 
 tory. As a boy, he had been solemnly 
 sent to Verona for confirmation, the Em- 
 peror, on that occasion, exchanging the 
 child's name of " Pietro " for the Emper- 
 or's own, " in sign of high favour and affec- 
 tion." After this, the lad spent much of his 
 time at Court, and before he was twenty, 
 married a Hungarian princess. The an- 
 nalists of this period exhaust their store 
 of adjectival epithets in praise of his gifts 
 of person, intellect, and heart. He was 
 " Catholic in faith, strong in justice, emi- 
 nent in religion, decorous in his way of 
 living, great in riches, and so full of all 
 kinds of goodness that, by his merits, he 
 was judged of all to be the most fit successor 
 of his excellent father and blessed grand- 
 father," — is the tribute of one historian. 
 
 Otto was but a lad — hardly eighteen, 
 according to some authorities — when Gio- 
 vanni, his princess-bride, and their infant 
 heir, were swept away at one breath of
 
 Told on the Lagoon 195 
 
 the destroyer. Orso, whose especial pupil 
 and darling the younger brother was, was 
 audacious in recommending that he should 
 share their father's authority, but he knew 
 Otto, and, it may be, was as well advised 
 as to his own personal influence in Venice. 
 Nevertheless, it was a perilous eminence 
 on which the young fellow was left alone 
 by his father's death. This occurred 
 within a couple of years after that of 
 Giovanni, and the Venetians, kept quiet 
 by the munificent bequest of the late Doge 
 of one half of his fortune, " for the use 
 and solace of all the poor in the Republic," 
 yielded what looked like willing obedience 
 to his successor for fifteen years. In all 
 this time, his intimacy with, and depend- 
 ence upon, Orso, were so evident that 
 they seemed to rule as one man. Orso 
 was now Patriarch of Grado, the highest 
 preferment in the gift of the Church. The 
 Orseoli virtually owned the Republic, and 
 there were hundreds of men as ambitious, 
 if less worthy, who envied them with all 
 the rancor of disappointed politicians and 
 ecclesiastical aspirants.
 
 196 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 The terrible truth that trouble came 
 first to Otto through an attack upon him- 
 self, seems never to have been absent from 
 Orso's memory from the beginning of 
 their reverses. The Doge had ruled with 
 exemplary moderation ; had been saga- 
 cious in counsel and intrepid in military 
 and naval movements, and remained sin- 
 gularly unspoiled by the honors crowded 
 and packed upon him from his childhood 
 up. The machinery of government, or- 
 dained and regulated by his father, had 
 worked so well and so lono- that we are 
 startled by the jar that threw it out of 
 balance. A rival and belligerent Patri- 
 arch, Poppo of Aquileia, after cunningly 
 undermining the influence of both broth- 
 ers among the easily-stirred populace, 
 boldly accused Orso to the Pope as one 
 who had been illegally appointed to his 
 high office, and was a wilful accessory in 
 the unlawful act. The Venetians had 
 taken too much for granted in their at- 
 tachment to the intriguing and powerful 
 Orseoli. The good of the Church and 
 the integrity of the State, so long dom-
 
 Told on the Lagoon 197 
 
 inated by the lordly race, demanded in- 
 vestigation into, and summary righting of, 
 this and divers other wrongs. 
 
 A popular tumult was incited by the 
 crafty insinuations. To accuse Orso was 
 to involve Otto, and he would not be 
 likely to listen calmly to aspersions of his 
 best-beloved brother. " Great discord be- 
 tween the Venetians and the Doge," was 
 the inevitable consequence of the at- 
 tempted investigation. In breathless suc- 
 cession ensued Orso's resignation of the 
 Patriarchate, and Otto's abdication of the 
 office of Doge. Indignant at the ingrati- 
 tude of those who owed their house so 
 much, they did not wait to be tried or de- 
 posed. Withdrawing voluntarily from the 
 scene of violent disquiet, they retired to 
 Istria, and left Venice to her fate. 
 
 The panic and anarchy warded off by 
 Otto's appointment to the place vacated 
 by Giovanni's death, swooped down upon 
 the ungoverned city, breeding such ex- 
 tremity of misery that a piteous recall was 
 sent to the self-expatriated pair within a 
 twelvemonth after their departure. Poppo
 
 198 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 had gained possession of Grado by pro- 
 mises of peaceful protection of the citi- 
 zens, and, once in, sacked and insulted her 
 as a conqueror. Otto was recalled in hot, 
 repentant haste, put the invaders to flight, 
 and re-entered Venice in calm triumph. 
 
 The work of restoration was not thor- 
 ough for some reason that is lost to us in 
 the mingling dust of the ages. Orso's 
 rehabilitation was cleaner and closer build- 
 ing than Otto's resumption of sovereignty. 
 His stirred nest was unskilfully relaid. 
 He may have been deficient in the discre- 
 tion that waits upon advance in years, or 
 the lesson of magnanimity he might have 
 learned from his elder brother, may have 
 been imperfectly conned. The fever of 
 popular reactionary enthusiasm, remitted 
 when the system was reduced by blood- 
 letting and famine, arose again before 
 Otto was fairly re-established in his father's 
 seat. His second exile was flight, and a 
 necessity. Orso was again his companion, 
 and, as before, of his own free will. Hav- 
 ing remained with his brother until he 
 was safe, and hospitably lodged in Con-
 
 Told on the Lagoon 199 
 
 stantinople, the brave priest returned to 
 Venice, and gave himself resolutely to the 
 work of clearing Otto's dear name from 
 obloquy, and bringing back the distracted 
 dupes of designing traitors to allegiance 
 to their rightful ruler. 
 
 Through one revolution, and yet another, 
 and another, he never relaxed his inten- 
 tion. It may well be conceived how loath- 
 some to a man of clean life and scholarly 
 tastes, must have been the contact with 
 the elements that fought against him. 
 Standing deep in the muck of Venetian 
 politics, his soul must have yearned un- 
 speakably for peace and Torcello ; for the 
 pastoral simplicity of the life he had put 
 behind him, the trustful affection of the 
 flock he had led and fed like a shep- 
 herd. 
 
 Whether or not his sacrifices and their 
 end were comprehended by the Venetians, 
 and his lofty patriotism moved them to 
 shame, we cannot say. Their first token 
 of a saner mood was in the earnest, even 
 abject, petition to him to accept the 
 Doge's place and name, and to hold it in
 
 200 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 trust until an embassy could be sent to 
 bring Otto home. 
 
 Venice never did a wiser thing than 
 in inducting the Patriarch Orso into the 
 office his grandfather, father, and brother 
 had filled in the best days of the mighty 
 Republic. Trained to statecraft in these 
 successive administrations, early admitted 
 to the honour of consultation with Pietro 
 Orseoli, and acting, for years, as Otto's 
 unofficial counsellor, while he combined 
 in himself the finest qualities of his pre- 
 decessors — he was able to lay upon the 
 helm a hand that brought the ship of 
 State out of the tempest and into such 
 calm waters as she had not known through 
 many a dark and cloudy day. Born to 
 the purple, he proved to be a leader born, 
 and not made by the exigencies of the 
 national crisis. 
 
 To Vitale, the youngest of the four 
 brothers, was committed the grateful task 
 of heading the embassy to Constantinople 
 and of conducting the exile in honour to 
 home and people. It was a long voyage, 
 and the trusty galleys, at their best, lagged
 
 Told on the Lagoon 201 
 
 far behind the eager flight of Orso's de- 
 sires to see the cidmination of his holy- 
 emprise. I think no man, since the corner- 
 stone of human history was laid, ever 
 knew purer exultation of hope than must 
 have sprung eternal in his brother-heart 
 through that year of waiting and working 
 and watching. 
 
 Presently — for we are nearing the island 
 — we will climb to the top of the rude 
 Campanile he had left as it was when he 
 rebuilt the Duomo, and look — as tradition 
 says and, we doubt not, truly, he was 
 wont to gaze, whenever he could escape 
 from Venice and State cares — over "the 
 paleness and the roar of the Adriatic," 
 sweeping the shifting distances with eyes 
 full of fond anticipation, and faint with 
 longing. How often he dreamed over 
 the meeting that would follow upon the 
 first glimpse of the masts and sails of the 
 homeward-bound fleet, we shall not trust 
 ourselves to think in the knowledge of 
 what the end of labour and dreaming was 
 to be. 
 
 As happily and as hopefully he beheld
 
 202 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 the increasing weakh and tranquillity of the 
 realm he would resign into Otto's hands 
 in the fulness of God's time. Every 
 evil overcome, every success achieved, 
 was one more love-gift for the boy, dearer 
 than life and fame, and than Torcello 
 itself, to the man who would never hold 
 son of his own in his arms. 
 
 The fleet came home. 
 
 Let us tell the rest briefly. 
 
 Otto was dead in exile. He had never 
 known that Orso was making and keep- 
 ing his rightful place for him, much less 
 how well the work was done, or in what 
 sublimity of love and faith he had awaited 
 the hour when his best-beloved should 
 have his own again. 
 
 The sharp prow of our gondola pushes 
 aside the branches of flowering " May," 
 — the sweet English hawthorn, lining the 
 inlet we have entered — and cuts into the 
 sedges drooping and dripping in the dead 
 water about the landing-place. The island 
 is as flat as a table-top, and little above 
 the wash of the tide. The cluster of 
 church-buildings stands in a grassy square.
 
 Told on the Lagoon 203 
 
 The surrounding meadows are whitened 
 by the Bethlehem stars. A few mean 
 cottages dot them, the homes of the hun- 
 dred-and-fifty farm-labourers who till the 
 fields they do not own. The Mother of 
 Venice sits, a Madonna Dolorosa to the 
 pitying few who come to muse upon what 
 she was to him who loved her best, and 
 who took refuge here when his beautiful 
 hope died a violent death. 
 
 From the Campanile we turn our 
 thoughtful steps to his tomb in front of 
 the high altar. Upon it is his effigy, in 
 strong basso-relievo. The Patriarch's mi- 
 tre is upon his head. 
 
 Did the peace stamped upon the face, 
 worn with thought and time, settle there 
 with the death-shadow ? or did the gentle 
 monotony of his priestly functions, the so- 
 ciety of his brother in faith and in blood, 
 who succeeded him in the Bishopric of 
 Torcello, and his sister the Lady Abbess, 
 " with perhaps a humbler nun or two of 
 the same blood " — like the stroke of mes- 
 meric finger-tips over tortured nerves, 
 finally assuage the sharpness of his pain.
 
 204 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 and soften the memory of the murder of 
 the beautiful hope ? And so did Torcello 
 begin to be for his comfort ? 
 
 There is no inscription upon the memo- 
 rial-slab. We could not bring ourselves 
 to read it if there were. That his end 
 was peace, and that his memory was 
 blessed with those who laid him here, full 
 of years and honours, we already know. 
 Before we set foot in his island bishopric, 
 we had settled within ourselves what 
 words would have been graven here, had 
 the beautiful hope lived and not perished, 
 and Otto the Doge closed the Patriarch 
 Orso's eyes for his last sleep : 
 
 " Thy love to me was wonderful, passing 
 the love of wonie7i."
 
 XII 
 IN RAVENNA 
 
 t05
 
 XII 
 IN RAVENNA 
 
 WE run down from Bologna to Ra- 
 venna by rail. The track is laid 
 along the line of a Roman road constructed 
 before the Christian era. The landscape 
 is placid in beauty, although monotonous. 
 The May haying is in progress ; mowers 
 stand waist-deep in millet and barley and 
 in clover that is tipped with purple spikes 
 instead of bobbing pink heads ; the bare- 
 footed women raking the swaths into heaps 
 are picturesque in red jackets and orange- 
 coloured petticoats. Each field is separated 
 from the rest by what we name " one-legged 
 dancers," — pollarded mulberry- and fig- 
 trees, joined by festoons of vines, vibrat- 
 ing in the gentle breeze that shows the 
 lining of flaming poppies under the 
 ruffled skirts of the standing grain. A 
 207
 
 2o8 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 scarlet bindino- of the same follows the 
 road-bed, and the wide picture of peace 
 and plenteousness has a frame of 
 mountains, benignant in outline, rich in 
 tint and shading. 
 
 At long intervals the white walls of a 
 villa and a cluster of grey farm-buildings 
 break up the green uniformity of the 
 distances, near and remote ; or the train 
 halts at a chateau of the fifteenth century, 
 now a railway station, or a town that was 
 the birthplace of an archbishop who died 
 about 490 A.D. and of a painter who saw 
 the light two years after Columbus discov- 
 ered America, and cannot, therefore, be 
 numbered with the ancients. 
 
 The sun-filled air is as delicious to the 
 lungs as the harmonious wealth of colour 
 to the sight. Verdure and mountain-range, 
 sunlight, and the atmosphere cooled by 
 wanderinor breaths from the sea we are 
 nearing, and from snow-caps, of which we 
 get furtive glimpses between lower peaks, 
 — were the same when Dante trod his 
 lonely way from Bologna in 13 19, and 
 when Byron travelled by post-chaise over
 
 In Ravenna 209 
 
 this very route in the month of June, 1819. 
 
 The house in which he took up his 
 abode upon his arrival in Ravenna is one of 
 the show-places of the town. Our cabman 
 drives us from the station, first, to the 
 Martyr's Monument, erected in 1888 to 
 the memory of Garibaldi's wife Anita, who 
 died in 1849, with her unborn child, of 
 hardships and exposure while hiding in the 
 Ravenna marshes from those who sought 
 her husband's life. Next, we are taken 
 to the Cathedral, rebuilt in the eighteenth 
 century upon the foundations of a church 
 older than itself by twelve hundred years. 
 Thirdly, we go to the Casa di Lord Byron. 
 
 It is now a cafe, bearing (of course) his 
 name, and, to suit the requirements of the 
 present occupants, the interior has been 
 materially altered. Externally, it remains 
 as it was seventy-odd years ago. It is two- 
 storied, of fair dimensions, and perfectly 
 plain in architecture ; the stone walls are 
 coated with the buff stucco which is the 
 livery of two-thirds of the private houses 
 and most of the hotels in Italy. The 
 arched doorway is the same from which
 
 2IO Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 the handsome English aristocrat emerged 
 daily for his lounge through the quaint, 
 shadowy streets, or his gallop in the 
 Pineta, and sallied forth duly after supper 
 for the evening call upon the Countess 
 Guiccioli, never omitted in the stormiest 
 weather. The common people of Ravenna 
 used to nudge one another as Dante 
 passed, and whisper to their children that 
 the stranger with the swarthy skin and 
 rapt eyes came and went to hell when- 
 ever he pleased to make the journey. 
 The haughty beauty and exclusive habits 
 of the foreign lord who had chosen, for no 
 reason that they could divine, a residence 
 in their out-of-the-way city, must have 
 moved the bourgeois gossips to conjectures 
 as absurd, until the secret of the magnet 
 that kept him here became public property. 
 
 " Lord Byron preferred Ravenna to all 
 the other towns of Italy, and was influenced 
 in some measure by his intimacy with the 
 Countess Guiccioli, a member of the 
 Gamba family of Ravenna," says Bae- 
 deker, primly, and lets the story pass. 
 
 The said "member" of a noble house
 
 BYRON'S HOUSE IN RAVENNA.
 
 In Ravenna 211 
 
 did not acquiesce in the disposition of 
 charitable ciceroni to smooth out one of 
 the ugHest creases in a Hfe that was badly 
 " laundered " throughout. On the con- 
 trary, she calls attention peremptorily to 
 the length and breadth and depth of the 
 social blemish by means of two ponderous 
 volumes, penned ostensibly — and osten- 
 tatiously — by her own hand in wordy 
 Italian, and done into English by an ab- 
 normally patient translator. The work is 
 incorrigibly stupid, and inconceivably 
 moralistic, when one considers who was 
 the author and who the subject of the 
 memoir. Skipping as lightly as the heavi- 
 ness of the soil will allow, over the chap- 
 ters devoted to Lord Byron's constancy, 
 his lofty sense of honour, his religious con- 
 victions, his marital magnanimity, and his 
 filial piety, we extract from the account of 
 his life in Ravenna certain details which 
 further the purpose we had in visiting 
 the sad and hoary town. 
 
 The book is opened upon our luncheon- 
 table in the dining-room of the Hotel 
 Lord Byron, hard by Casa and cafe. It
 
 2 12 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 is a cheerful, commodious little caravan- 
 sery, flanked by a garden gay with roses, 
 jasmine, honeysuckle, and azaleas. Out of 
 a gorgeous tangle of these rises a fine 
 marble bust of Byron, taken — as we 
 would fain depict him to ourselves, even 
 here, if we could — at his best. 
 
 " The Countess G ," as she deli- 
 cately designates herself, writes modestly 
 in the third person and makes it plain, 
 unintentionally and unconsciously, that 
 other attractions besides hers had part in 
 bringing Byron to Ravenna, if not in 
 detaining him here. 
 
 He had been an inmate of No. 225 
 Strada di Porta Sisi for some weeks be- 
 fore he became intimate with the inmates 
 of the Palazzo Guiccioli, Via di Porta 
 Adriana. What followed we give in the 
 titled author's own words : 
 
 "He was requested by Count G 
 
 to accompany his young wife into society, 
 to the play, everywhere in short. Soon 
 Lord Byron took up his abode in their 
 palace, and the repose of heart and mind 
 he thus attained was so great that no sad-
 
 In Ravenna 213 
 
 ness seemed able to come near him so 
 long as this tranquil, regular, pleasing sort 
 of existence lasted." 
 
 The chapter embodying this choice ex- 
 cerpt bears the caption, The Melancholy 
 of Lo7'd Byron. The naive presumption 
 upon her readers' sympathy in the lament 
 over the untoward circumstances that in- 
 duced his relapse into the slough of de- 
 spond must provoke a smile from the most 
 puritanical of us all. We are left to glean 
 from other sources the trivial facts of the 
 trustincr husband's awakenings to the rela- 
 tions existing between the wife who was 
 many years his junior, and his honoured 
 guest and friend, promoted by the unsus- 
 pecting old noble to the position of her 
 cavaliere servente. 
 
 Byron's residence in the Palazzo Guic- 
 cioli came to an unpleasant end, and he 
 returned to his old quarters. 
 
 " The Countess G obtained from 
 
 his Holiness Pius VII., at the petition of 
 her parents, permission to leave her hus- 
 band and return home to her family," is 
 our next item of disconnected informa-
 
 2 14 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 tion, and that, while his fair friend lived 
 quietly in a country house, Byron " was 
 now reduced to solitude in the same place 
 her presence had gladdened." 
 
 " Ravenna," continues the Countess 
 
 G , " which is always a sad kind of 
 
 abode, becomes in autumn quite a desert, 
 liable to fever. There was no longer a 
 single being with whom he could exchange 
 a word or a thought." 
 
 Equinoctial storms of wind and rain 
 prevented him from seeking solace in his 
 favourite diversions of boating, swimming, 
 and riding. The Casa Lord Byron, sod- 
 den with rain outside until the buff walls 
 were a jaundiced yellow, while the sea- 
 winds, driving in at the casement seams 
 and under the doors over the stone floors, 
 made the interior as bleak as the drenched 
 outer world, must have been a sorry place, 
 difficult to conceive of amid the bloom 
 and brightness of the Italian garden be- 
 fore our eyes. 
 
 " This season kills me with sadness," 
 the ennuy^ed exile wrote to the Countess 
 G , September 20, 1820. "When I
 
 In Ravenna 215 
 
 have my mental malady it is well for 
 others to keep away. Love me ! My soul 
 is like the leaves that fall in autumn — all 
 yellow." 
 
 He had more active causes for discon- 
 tent as the weeks went on. Dreading 
 few things more than a return to the Eng- 
 land he had sworn he would never see 
 again, he regarded with repugnance the 
 probability that he might be summoned 
 as a witness in the trial of Queen Caroline, 
 then pending in the English courts. His 
 letters kept him uneasy on this head, and 
 furthermore contained news of the dan- 
 gerous illness of his illegitimate daughter 
 Allegra, who, happily for her, died some 
 months later. Side by side with these 
 
 troubles, the Countess G sets the 
 
 grave fact that, notwithstanding the gra- 
 cious decree of Pius VH., she "continued 
 to be tormented by her husband, who re- 
 fused to accept the decision of Rome 
 because he did not wish for a separation." 
 Also, that " the Papal Government, pushed 
 on by the Austrian police, had recourse 
 to a thousand small, vexatious measures
 
 2i6 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 to make Lord Byron quit Ravenna, where 
 he had given offence by becoming too 
 popular with the Liberal Party." 
 
 The weather of that winter is described 
 as " extraordinary. Snow and sirocco 
 one day ; ice and snow the other." On 
 account of a misunderstanding with his 
 English publisher and agent, Byron's let- 
 ters and papers were not forwarded to Ra- 
 venna for several weeks together. 
 
 " His sole amusement consisted in stir- 
 ring the fire and playing with Lion, his 
 mastiff, or with his little menagerie." 
 
 Don Juan had been published anony- 
 mously, and a new anxiety beset him on 
 hearing that Shelley had been adjudged 
 unfit to have the guardianship of his child 
 in consequence of his atheistic writings. 
 Ada Byron, by the terms of her parents' 
 separation, was to be allowed to commun- 
 icate with and to see her father at his will, 
 when she should reach the age of eighteen. 
 Byron wrote urgently to his publishers 
 not to allow the authorship of his poem 
 to transpire. 
 
 " I prefer my child to a poem at any time."
 
 In Ravenna 217 
 
 A prey to " the worm, the canker, and 
 the grief," he Hved out the lowering days, 
 with no prospect from his windows save 
 the dripping blank walls of the opposite 
 houses, chilled to the bone and to the 
 heart. Yet a half-smile of contempt curls 
 our lips in reading that his evening visit 
 
 to the Countess G , who had again 
 
 taken up her abode in Ravenna, was the 
 only light that crossed his shadowed path. 
 One passage is almost pastoral in guileless 
 phraseology : 
 
 " A few simple airs played by her on the 
 piano, some slight diversion, such as a ray 
 of sunshine between two showers, or a star 
 in the heavens, raising hopes of a brighter 
 morrow, sufficed to clear up his horizon," 
 
 The effect of the sketch, dashed in with 
 these few touches of the artistic brush, 
 would be pleasing were it not for sundry 
 inconvenient memories which break up 
 unities and injure perspectives. 
 
 In 18 16 Byron had studied the Armen- 
 ian language because he " found that his 
 mind wanted something craggy to break 
 upon," and he had chosen this rugged
 
 2i8 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 tongue " to torture him into attention." 
 To the same end, he began, and finished, 
 Sardanapalus in Ravenna. 
 
 The Countess G had gone to Flor- 
 ence and Pisa upon a visit of some length, 
 and her letters, " pregnant with alarm and 
 affliction lest Lord Byron should be assas- 
 sinated at Ravenna," did not abate the 
 melancholy that settled upon his spirit like 
 the miasmatic mists of the marshes across 
 which he galloped every passably fine day 
 to the '* long alleys of imperial pines." 
 
 In the absence of his fair friend, the 
 most brilliant and the most miserable man 
 of his day had his evenings again upon his 
 hands, and with no companions except 
 faithful Lion and the trooping memories 
 at which we have hinted. They had been 
 busy and relentless on the night preceding 
 the anniversary of a day he had cursed 
 many a time, and more savagely than in 
 the mood that prompted lines whose power 
 and pathos lie in their sincerity and lack 
 of art : 
 
 " To-morrow is my birthday. That is 
 to say, at twelve of the clock, midnight —
 
 In Ravenna ±ig 
 
 I. e., in twelve minutes, I shall have com- 
 pleted thirty-three years of age ! ! ! and I 
 go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at 
 having lived so long, and to so little pur- 
 pose. ... I do not regret this year for 
 what I have done, but for what I have no^ 
 done." 
 
 The tablet above the door of the Casa 
 Lord Byron was inserted in the wall many 
 years after the death of him who made 
 the homely building classic. We copy part 
 of it from our seat in the carriage we have 
 engaged to take us to the Pineta after we 
 have visited the Tomb of Dante on the 
 next corner : 
 
 LORD BYRON, 
 
 Splendore del Secolo Decimonono 
 
 E di nostre glorie poeta nell' insuperato Child 
 
 Harold 
 Questa Casa il lo Giugno 1819 a sua duiora eletta 
 Perche vicina alia Tomba di Dante Alighieri 
 Otto mesi abitava mal sapendosi dividere 
 Dair immortale dell' Italia indipendenza initiatore 
 E dair famosa ed unica Pineta. 
 
 (LORD BYRON, 
 
 Splendour of the nineteenth century, and
 
 220 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 poet of our glories in the unsurpassed 
 Childe Harold, selected this house as his 
 dwelling, June lo, 1819, because near to 
 the tomb of Dante Aligfhieri. He lived 
 in it eight months, hardly knowing how to 
 part from the immortal initiator of Italian 
 independence and from the famous and 
 unique Pineta. ) 
 Byron tells us : 
 
 " I pass each day where Dante's bones are laid ; 
 A little cupola, more neat than solemn, 
 Protects his dust." 
 
 Within the last forty years we have 
 learned that the "neat" tomb before 
 which the brother-bard must have mused 
 a thousand times, and upon which he laid 
 a sheaf of his own poems in reverent 
 sympathy with the transports that drove 
 Alfieri to his knees at the base of the 
 monument crowned by the august profile 
 in basso rilievo, — did not then hold 
 Dante's bones, or so much as a handful 
 of his ashes. 
 
 "The story of his burial, and of the 
 discovery of his real tomb is fresh in the
 
 DANTE'S TOMB IN RAVENNA.
 
 In Ravenna 221 
 
 memory of everyone," writes John Ad- 
 dington Symonds, in his exquisite mono- 
 graph upon Ravenna. 
 
 We have heard several versions of the 
 tale, but these were so contradictory and 
 garbled that we gratefully avail ourselves 
 of more direct information, in the shape of 
 a history of Ravenna bought here and 
 recommended as trustworthy by compe- 
 tent judges of historic records. The ac- 
 count herein given is, perhaps, far more 
 interesting to us than to Mr. Symonds's 
 better-read audience. Especially when 
 the rough translation I take the liberty to 
 append herewith is rendered low and rap- 
 idly within the very precincts of the small 
 temple, our skirts brushing the shrine and, 
 through the open door, the sunshine fall- 
 ing aslant upon the familiar lineaments of 
 the Mighty Master : 
 
 " From the end of the fourteenth century 
 until 1865, incessant demands were made 
 by Florence for the bones of the Poet, 
 that they might be reverently deposited 
 in the Church of Santa Croce. But the 
 love and just pride which moved that city
 
 222 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 to demand this, determined Ravenna to 
 refuse it. When, however, Ravenna was 
 once more under the power of the Popes, 
 and a Medici, under the name of Leo X., 
 mounted the papal throne, the danger 
 that the precious skeleton might be rifled 
 from its niche became imminent. In fact, 
 Leo X., in 15 19, granted permission to 
 the Florentines to open the sepulchre of 
 Dante, take up the remains, and transport 
 them to their own country. When the 
 commissioners arrived, and the urn was 
 opened, they found only a few leaves of 
 laurel and aloes and a little dust. 
 
 "They beheld, also, that in the side of 
 the arch backed by the wall of the con- 
 vent [Franciscan] there was a fissure, and 
 comprehended that the Franciscans had 
 foiled them by working from the inside of 
 the cloister and removing the bones. The 
 regrets of the Florentines were great, and 
 continued under the reign of Clement 
 Vn. [another Medici], but he was en- 
 grossed by too many and too serious po- 
 litical complications to occupy himself 
 with the bones of a poet. These re-
 
 In Ravenna 223 
 
 mained within the monastery, in the 
 jealous custody of the brethren, who 
 transmitted them from one generation to 
 the other, making at intervals a recognition 
 [recog7iizione\. One of these was made 
 by Father Antonio Santi, in 1677, and 
 another, it appears, in 1723, by Father 
 Guardiano Pallavese. Those who be- 
 lieved that Father Santi concealed the 
 casket he had made containing the bones, 
 within the walled gate where they were 
 found in 1865, were mistaken. This gate 
 was opened in 1701, hardly a quarter- 
 century after the recognizione of Father 
 Santi, and remained open to give access 
 to the old cemetery during the entire cent- 
 ury. Everything indicates that the bones 
 were hidden where they afterward came 
 to light as late as 18 10. That is, when 
 the Franciscans, under the new law of 
 suppression, departed with no hope of 
 return. It is certainly known that one 
 Father Amadori went about shortly after, 
 saying ' there was to be found in Braccio- 
 ioxX.^ a great treasure.' . 
 
 "In 1865, the year in which occurred
 
 2 24 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 the sixth centenary of Dante's birth, the 
 Commune set about the demohtion of a 
 small church near the tomb of the Poet. 
 In this work they found that part of the 
 wall corresponded with the wall of the 
 Franciscan monastery. Five urns were 
 discovered here, the statue of Guardarello 
 Guardarelli, and, in a walled-up gate, a 
 portion of which is now preserved in an 
 enclosure of Istria stone, the coffer con- 
 taining the bones of Dante. . . . This 
 wooden casket in which, in 1677, Father 
 Antonio Santi deposited the bones of 
 Dante . . . after the recogntzio7te, is 
 still preserved in the library." 
 
 We are led out of the temple tomb 
 into an adjoining area, where the cus- 
 todian unlocks a door in the side of the 
 oblong "enclosure of Istria stone," that 
 we may see the former hiding-place of 
 the hoarded and hunted mortal part of 
 Dante, — a wanderer and fugitive in death 
 as in life. 
 
 It is all infinitely pitiable, but our re- 
 grets are not with " ungrateful Florence " 
 in " the remorse of ag^es " that found ex-
 
 In Ravenna 225 
 
 pression in the unseemly game of hide- 
 and-seek. 
 
 From Byron's house and Dante's tomb, 
 we turn our faces, naturally, to the Pineta 
 of To-day, the Pinetum of a Past so old 
 we are dizzied in the thinking of it. 
 
 Ravenna was a Roman naval station 
 before Christ, and before that was a pro- 
 totype of Venice in situation, wealth, and 
 beauty, '* standing in the centre of a huge 
 lagoon, the fresh waters of the Ronco 
 and the Po mixing with the salt waves of 
 the Adriatic around its very walls." The 
 sea has receded sullenly as riches and 
 population have deserted the doomed 
 city, until she lies stranded six miles, as 
 the crow flies, from the nearest beach. 
 Shrunken and decrepit, her only pulse of 
 commerce is a sluggish canal, ten miles 
 long, down which a few small vessels 
 creep to the Adriatic. 
 
 Wood for the galleys of Augustus, for 
 those of the consuls who went before, and 
 for the ships of those who wore the im- 
 perial purple after him, was cut in the 
 Pinetum, then forty miles in length, and
 
 226 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 five or six in width. We are told, — and 
 we credit it, at sight of the remaining 
 monarchs, lifting their palmy brows to 
 heaven, — that these pines did not gain 
 maturity in height, in heart, and in girth 
 under three centuries of growth. After a 
 five miles' drive over a depressing level, 
 we catch sight of this remnant of departed 
 grandeur. To our apprehension it vies in 
 mournful magnificence with the unfading 
 mosaics of aged Ravenna. 
 
 Half-way between the town and the 
 old boundary of the Pinetum is a church 
 founded in memory of an immediate suc- 
 cessor of the Apostles, who suffered mar- 
 tyrdom here ''July 2j, 79/" The flat, 
 long road is a mere causeway, bordered, 
 for a couple of miles, by fertile fields and 
 farm-cottages, after that by festering fens 
 that breed deadly fevers in summer and 
 autumn. Like the fickle sea, the pine 
 forest has retreated from the city of which 
 it was formerly the inimitable ornament. 
 We gain the impression, in looking back 
 to her and forward to the solemn border 
 of blackish-green cutting into the sky-line,
 
 In Ravenna 227 
 
 that the two were in an unholy compact 
 in leaving the discrowned queen to die 
 slowly and alone. 
 
 Our cab-driver calls the weary route 
 five miles long. We know it to be ten 
 before we alight at the outermost rank 
 of the ancient giants. The terrible frosts 
 in the winter of 1880-81 killed great trees 
 by the hundred, and younger by the 
 thousand. In 1895, a fire, kindled by 
 some wood-cutters, got away from them 
 and burned up so much of what the frost 
 had left that a scanty fringe, between 
 seven and eight miles in length and less 
 than a mile broad, is all we have left of 
 "what existed in the time of Odoacer 
 and has been extolled by Dante, Boccac- 
 cio, Dryden, and Byron." 
 
 Sweet-hearted Nature, nowhere more 
 generous than in Italy, is doing her best, 
 and in loving haste, to rebuild the waste 
 places. Thickets of hawthorn and wild 
 roses have grown up again among the 
 columnar boles of the larger trees ; creep- 
 ing vines, some of which we know by 
 sight and name, although most of them
 
 228 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 are as strange as they are lovely, run 
 lithely up to the lower boughs and fling 
 out flowering pendants in the balm-laden 
 air. The breath of the balsamic trees is 
 a catholicon in the very heart of the pesti- 
 lential district. Miasmatic currents from 
 the marshes never pass the charmed ram- 
 parts. We pick up brown cones with 
 closely knit scales, glossy, as from varnish, 
 and of surprising weight. They are laden, 
 we are informed, with the chief wealth of 
 the neighbouring peasantry, the toothsome 
 kernels of the stone-pine, popular with 
 Italian cooks, and with confectioners every- 
 where. The ground is carpeted by mosses 
 and wild-flowers ; now and then a bird 
 sends a melodious trill or cadenza from 
 arbors no man has planted or woven. 
 Among the evergreen rafters and groin- 
 ings of the roof, a hundred feet above 
 our heads, the music goes on forever, — 
 anthem, chant, Miserere, and Te Deu7n, — 
 a magnificent surge of sound, movements, 
 and numbers that were old when the world 
 was young.
 
 In Ravenna 229 
 
 " Harpers, harping with their harps," 
 
 quotes one, softly. 
 Another, — 
 
 " The Wind — that grand old harper — smote 
 His thunder-harp of pines." 
 
 For us, Dante walks still beneath the 
 boughs that combine into our cathedral- 
 roof. " Che mspirb gik il Divino^' is a 
 clause in the tablet upon Byron's house 
 in Ravenna. The English poet's love 
 for the 
 
 " solitude 
 
 Of the pine-forest, and the silent shore 
 Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood. 
 Rooted where once the Adrian wave flowed o'er 
 To where the last Caesarean fortress stood," 
 
 puts words into our mouths and gentler 
 charity into our hearts as we, too, stroll 
 and dream.
 
 XIII 
 IL MAGNIFICO 
 
 231
 
 XIII 
 XL MAGNIFICO 
 
 IT was a Pazzo who brought to Florence 
 a torch kindled at the fire that comes 
 down yearly from Heaven to the Holy 
 Sepulchre in Jerusalem. With fine dis- 
 regard of distances by sea and land, and 
 the non-existence of swift transit facilities 
 a thousand-and-odd years ago, the legend 
 relates how the then obscure adventurer 
 transported the sacred fire at full gallop 
 all the way from the church built by 
 Constantine at the behest of his mother, 
 Helena, to Santa Reparata, on the site 
 of which the Duomo of Florence now 
 stands. 
 
 When within a few miles of the city he 
 
 perceived that the current of air created 
 
 by his breakneck zeal endangered the life 
 
 of the blazing flambeau. Whereupon, 
 
 233
 
 2 34 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 without checking his speed, he wheeled 
 about in the saddle and dashed into the 
 city, facing the horse's tail, thus screening 
 the flickering fire with his body. 
 
 " See the pas3o (crazy fellow) !" hooted 
 the mob. 
 
 From which outcry, when the truth was 
 known, — and the pious ingenuity of the 
 rider was rewarded by the thanks of the 
 Church and the freedom of the city, with 
 a palace and a fortune thrown in to weight 
 the empty honours, — the house that be- 
 came a power in the State took the name 
 of Pazzi, and bore it boastfully forever 
 afterward. 
 
 This is the story revived in Florence 
 upon each Easter-even, when all the world 
 crowds to the Cathedral to witness the 
 spectacle some dead-and-gone-ages-ago 
 Pazzi — perhaps the original torchbearer 
 — left money to perpetuate to the end of 
 time, or as long as people are willing to 
 be fooled, which amounts to the same 
 thing. 
 
 We saw it, a month ago, in the Duomo 
 where Savonarola used to preach against
 
 II Magnifico 235 
 
 priestly follies and vain amusements, and 
 lies of all sorts. A tall pole was held up- 
 right in the central aisle by wires ; other 
 wires ran from it to the high altar and to 
 the great front door, the whole length of 
 the building. The crowd, like all holiday 
 Italian crowds, was good-humoured, cour- 
 teous, and patient of the hour's delay be- 
 tween the time set for the exhibition and 
 its actual occurrence. Mass was going on 
 before the altar. Gleams of moving can- 
 dles, the white sacques of choir-boys, and 
 the tinselled copes and stoles of the offi- 
 ciating priests were visible in the gaps of 
 the throngr. A few of those who were 
 near enough to see what was passing 
 there, knelt and bowed, from time to time, 
 rather politely than devoutly. Snatches 
 of responsive chanting arose above, and 
 punctuated, the hum of talk and the inde- 
 scribable rustle of moving human bodies 
 as the press became solid from wall to 
 wall. The palpitating mass parted, and 
 without disorder, to clear the aisle for a 
 procession of priests and acolytes with 
 tapers and one odd-looking pennon fast-
 
 236 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 ened to a long staff, marching slowly, 
 chanting as they passed, to the door and 
 so out into the square. Their errand was 
 to bless the pyramidal car, wreathed with 
 flowers and strung with fireworks, await- 
 ing the coming of the sacred flame from 
 the altar. The four immense cream-col- 
 oured oxen with garlanded horns, attached 
 to the car, shared in the benediction. 
 
 The procession marched back to the 
 chancel, and, within a decent interval after 
 this return, a glare of electric light lit up 
 the building ; a rocket whizzed shrilly 
 along the central wire, showering sparks 
 as it ftew, and through the entrance to the 
 peak of the car. Then, amid the banging 
 and popping and hissing that filled the 
 great dome with smoke and reverbera- 
 tion, it sped back to the tall pole, its mis- 
 sion accomplished. The rocket is known 
 as the " Dove." The exhibition would 
 be puerile and undignified at a Fourth of 
 July celebration in a mining-camp of the 
 rudest West. It signifies the descent of 
 the holy fire which we, of this practical 
 century, are asked to believe is miracu-
 
 II Magnifico 237 
 
 lously kindled annually in the (alleged) 
 Holy Sepulchre. 
 
 Dove, pyrotechnics, and legend are sanc- 
 tioned by the Mother Church, and the 
 **show" is ushered in by religious services 
 in a consecrated temple. The sequitur is 
 the slow, lumbering progress of the car 
 drawn by the blessed oxen, to the Pazzi 
 palace, in grateful recognition of the mu- 
 nificence that bestowed one more festa 
 upon the Italian populace. 
 
 The Pazzi, at a much later date in 
 Florentine history, played a leading part 
 in another and far dissimilar scene in this 
 same Duomo. The names of Francesco 
 and Jacopo Pazzi were prominent among 
 the ringleaders of the conspiracy against 
 the lives of Lorenzo de' Medici (II Magni- 
 fico) and his favourite brother, Giuliano — 
 " a kindly youth whose only fault was that 
 he belonged to the cursed line of the 
 Medici." The nephews of the reigning 
 Pontiff, Sixtus V., the Archbishop of Pisa, 
 and divers of the lesser clergy, were mixed 
 up with the plot to assassinate the broth- 
 ers upon Sunday, April 26, 1478. The
 
 238 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 moment fixed upon (let us hope not by 
 papal authority) was that when, in the 
 course of the evening service, the Host 
 should be elevated by the priest above 
 the kneeling congregation. Lorenzo was 
 "told off" to the dagger of a reverend 
 accomplice, while the Pazzi undertook to 
 despatch Giuliano. 
 
 We have read the tragedy in a dozen 
 different books, and always with a throb of 
 keenest pity for the inoffensive youth, who 
 fell a swift and bloody sacrifice to his de- 
 tested name. In my girlhood I hung spell- 
 bound over a historical novelette that had 
 its denouement in the Cathedral murder. 
 I have forgotten author and title. I shall 
 never forget the story of Francesco Pazzi's 
 call for Giuliano at the house of the 
 latter, that the conspirators might be sure 
 of his attendance at the evening service, 
 and the incident of the false friend's im- 
 pulsive embrace of his smiling dupe, that 
 he might know whether or not he wore a 
 shirt of mail under his silken doublet. 
 
 The very words of the novelist have 
 stayed by me all these years.
 
 II Magnifico 239 
 
 " Reassured by the warmth and softness 
 of the unprotected flesh, he let his hand 
 sHp from GiuHano's shoulder to his arm, 
 and the two walked on gayly, side-by-side, 
 to the Cathedral, already thronged with 
 worshippers." 
 
 The younger of the Medicean brothers 
 was stabbed to the heart by Francesco de' 
 Pazzi at the (jiven sigrnal. In kneeling at 
 the lifting of the Host, Giuliano bowed 
 himself in death. The assassin struck 
 again to make sure of his deadly purpose, 
 and in his awkward violence lamed him- 
 self by a cut in the thigh. The priest's 
 attack upon Lorenzo was yet more clumsy, 
 inflicting only a flesh-wound in the neck. 
 Although taken at such cruel disadvan- 
 tage, Lorenzo defended himself so well 
 that he and the two friends who had ac- 
 companied him to the Cathedral — Poli- 
 tian, the poet and scholar, and Antonio 
 Ridolfi, a Florentine noble — fought their 
 way to the sacristy and barred the door 
 against their assailants. Once secure in 
 their asylum, Ridolfi's first action was to 
 apply his lips to the cut in his patron's
 
 240 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 neck, to draw out the venom should the 
 priestly poniard have been poisoned. 
 
 Foiled of their prey, the assassins 
 rushed into the streets of the town, calling 
 upon the oppressed people to rise against 
 the Medicean tyrant, Jacopo de' Pazzi 
 shoutino- " Freedom ! and down with 
 the palle ! (the balls that were the ar- 
 mourial bearings of the Medici)." The 
 effort to rally those whose cooperation 
 they had a right to expect was, like the 
 demonstration in the Duomo, a pitiable 
 failure. 
 
 In the highly dramatic sketch of the 
 unsuccessful plot given in Howells's Tuscan 
 Cities, — than which no other volume of 
 travel conveys to us more faithfully the 
 very breath and colour of Florentine life, — 
 the bungler, Francesco, is apostrophised 
 with graphic bitterness : 
 
 " Pick yourself up, Francesco Pazzi, and 
 get home as you may ! There is no 
 mounting to horse and crying liberty 
 through the streets for you ! All is over ! 
 The wretched populace, the servile si- 
 gnory, side with the Medici. In a few
 
 II Magnifico 241 
 
 hours the Archbishop of Pisa is swinging 
 by the neck from a window of the Palazzo 
 Vecchio ; and while he is yet alive, you 
 are dragged, bleeding and naked, from 
 your bed through the streets and hung 
 beside him, so close that, in his dying 
 agony, he sets his teeth in your breast 
 with a convulsive frenzy that leaves you 
 fast in the death-clutch of his jaws till 
 they cut the ropes, and you run hideously 
 down to the pavement below." 
 
 One has need to draw a deep, painful 
 breath between this passage and the next 
 chapter, a necessity acknowledged by the 
 author in the introductory sentence : 
 
 " One must face these grisly details 
 from time to time, if he would feel what 
 Florence was, . . . Compared with 
 modern cities, Florence was but a large 
 town, and these Pazzi were neighbours 
 and kinsmen of the Medici, and they and 
 their fathers had seen the time when the 
 Medici were no more in the State than 
 other families which had perhaps scorned 
 to rise by their arts." 
 
 Whatever may have been the virtuous
 
 242 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 scruples of the Pazzi and the superior arts 
 of the Medici, all Florence, and the world 
 that knew Florence, appreciated the glit- 
 tering fact of the Medici's eminence. 
 
 On the golden afternoon we have chosen 
 for our visit to the Villa Careggi, where 
 — to borrow once more from the master of 
 terse and comprehensive English to whom 
 we owe Tusca7i Cities, — " Lorenzo m.ade 
 a dramatic end twenty years after the 
 tragedy in the Cathedral," — we pass sun- 
 dry statues and mural tablets to Cosimo, 
 " Pater Patrice'' and more Medici coats-of- 
 arms than we care to count. It is an ugly 
 escutcheon, to our way of thinking, with 
 a strong dash of the absurd in the big 
 boluses jutting out from the surface of the 
 shield to keep the ages in mind of the 
 membership in the Guild of the Druggists 
 or the Apothecaries. The taunt that the 
 founder of the imperial house made, first, 
 an honest living, then, a less honest for- 
 tune, by compounding and rolling pills, 
 belongs to a later generation of critics 
 than the contemporary enemies of the 
 Medici. They, at least, were acquainted
 
 II Magnifico 243 
 
 with the law enacted in 1282, by which 
 none but the heads of manual arts, trad- 
 ers, or bankers, were eligible to the princi- 
 pal offices of the State. The bourgeoisie 
 were masters in the city by reason of their 
 wealth and numbers, and were ungenerous 
 in the use of their power. 
 
 " Members of the aristocratic party 
 were permitted to enroll themselves in 
 any guild or art without more than a nom- 
 inal adoption of the craft in question, by 
 way of retaining their political rights," 
 says a chronicler of those complex times, 
 and reminds us that " Dante Alighieri, 
 poeta fiorentino^' belonged to the Guild 
 of the Apothecaries, while his father 
 was a member of the Wool Merchants' 
 Guild. 
 
 The haughty Medici, in their haughtiest 
 days, were so far from being ashamed of 
 their escutcheon, that they stuck shield 
 and balls — otherwise boluses — upon every 
 fa9ade and corner where was room or 
 reason for displaying them. We have 
 found them in Umbrian, as in Tuscan 
 cities, and the many that remain must re-
 
 244 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 present but a tithe of those that were here 
 in the reign of II Magnifico. 
 
 Before quitting the city for the Villa 
 Careggi, we diverge from the direct route 
 to make a critical study of the Uffizi statue 
 of Lorenzo de' Medici, representing him 
 as he was in the heyday of his puissance. 
 The sculptor would have done his best to 
 flatter his illustrious subject to the extrem- 
 est verge of compatibility with truth- 
 fulness. Yet it would be easier to fancy 
 that we are looking at a caricature than 
 upon a portrait of a patron whose vanity 
 was as patent as his gilded despotism. 
 His grandfather, the great Cosimo, lorded 
 it with a high hand, but he looked the 
 real benevolence he felt for the people 
 calling themselves his children. The cold 
 sneer Grazzini has petrified for us was 
 upon Lorenzo's lip when murder, or ra- 
 pine, or pleasure was the business of the 
 hour. 
 
 " There was something sinister and hate- 
 ful in his face," if we are to believe 
 Villari. 
 
 " The complexion was greenish, the
 
 LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT. 
 ' There was something sinister and hateful in his face.'
 
 II Magnifico 245 
 
 mouth very large, the nose flat, and the 
 voice nasal. But "—(even with hypercriti- 
 cal biographers there must be a "but") — 
 " But his eye was quick and keen, his fore- 
 head was high, and his manner had all .of 
 gentleness that can be imagined of an age 
 so refined and elegant as that. His con- 
 versation was full of vivacity, wit, and 
 learning. Those who were admitted to 
 
 his familiarity were always fascinated by 
 
 h)) 
 im. 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant's invaluable Makers of 
 Floreiice thus treats of the magnificent 
 tyrant : 
 
 " Lorenzo reigned in the midst of a 
 lettered crowd of classic parasites and 
 flatterers, writing poems which his court- 
 iers found better than Alighieri's, and 
 surrounding himself with those eloquent 
 slaves who make a prince's name more 
 famous than arms or victories, and who 
 have left a prejudice in the minds of all 
 literature-loving people in favour of their 
 patron. A man of superb health and 
 physical power who can give himself up 
 to debauch all night without interfering
 
 246 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 with his power of working all day, and 
 whose mind is so versatile that he can 
 sack a town one morning and discourse 
 upon the beauties of Plato the next, and 
 weave joyous ballads through both oc- 
 cupations — gives his flatterers reason when 
 they applaud him. . . . The age of 
 Lorenzo was hopeless, morally, full of de- 
 bauchery, cruelty, and corruption, violat- 
 ing oaths, betraying trusts, believing in 
 nothing but Greek manuscripts, coins, and 
 statues, caring for nothing but pleasure." 
 
 An Italian historian supplies the details 
 of the picture of what Lorenzo and his 
 troop of worshippers claimed was the 
 Augustan Age of art-loving Florence : 
 
 " Poets of every kind, gentle and simple, 
 with golden cithern and with rustic lute, 
 came from every quarter to animate the 
 suppers of the Magnifico. Whosoever 
 sang of arms, of love, of saints, of fools, 
 was welcome, or he who, drinking, kept 
 the company amused. . . . 
 
 " Of all these feasts and masquerades 
 Lorenzo was the inventor and master, his 
 great wealth helping him in his undertak-
 
 II Magnifico 247 
 
 ings. In the darkening of twilight it 
 was his custom to issue forth into the city, 
 to amuse himself with incredible pomp 
 and a great retinue on horse and on foot, 
 more than five hundred in number, with 
 concerts of musical instruments, singing 
 in many voices, all sorts of canzones, mad- 
 rigals, and popular songs. When the night 
 fell, four hundred servants with lighted 
 torches followed, and lighted this baccha- 
 nalian procession." 
 
 From the Riccardi Palace, the town 
 residence of the Medici, through the city 
 gates to the mansion that was the luxuri- 
 ous centre of a cluster of seven Medicean 
 country-seats, streamed the glittering tide 
 of revelers, each bent upon living up — or 
 down — to their favourite watchword, " Up- 
 on to-morrow none can count," a variation 
 of the Fool's song of all ages — " Let us 
 eat and drink, and be merry, for to-mor- 
 row we die." 
 
 The two -miles- and- a- half of country 
 road leading to the Villa Careggi is as 
 beautiful as the fairest dream of earthly 
 Eden cast into verse by Lorenzo's poets.
 
 248 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 Stone walls and terraces are hung and 
 heaped with roses, — Florentine roses, — 
 outnumbering the green leaves among 
 which they blossom. 
 
 Upon entering my chamber after break- 
 fast this morning I found it fragrant as a 
 bower in Bendemeer from the deep litter 
 of damp rose-petals scattered upon the 
 carpet to lay the dust before the house- 
 maid swept it, as wet tea-leaves are used 
 in America. After petals and dust are 
 removed together, the delicate aroma 
 lingers in the air for hours. 
 
 Whether or not the pretty custom pre- 
 vailed in Lorenzo's time, he set and fol- 
 lowed the like fashion in a wider and more 
 significant sense. He entered voluntarily 
 upon no path that was not soft and sweet 
 with roses. They made rough places 
 smooth to his feet and goodly to look upon ; 
 they laid the dust of popular discontent 
 and enervated the judgment of critics. He 
 stole away the hearts and drugged the 
 consciences of the people by pageants for 
 the present, and promises of greater abund- 
 ance for days to come, and was in nothing
 
 II Magnifico 249 
 
 more consistent than in the brilliant con- 
 formity of his own life to the Epicurean 
 philosophy he taught to others : 
 
 " Roses to-day, if to-morrow the rue ! " 
 
 If he ever bethought himself of a pos- 
 sible hour when roses would die and the 
 bitter breath of the rue fill his world, he 
 made no sign of misgiving for all those 
 twenty years of prosperous pleasures. 
 
 White clusters of honey-sweet locust- 
 blossoms mingle their scent with the breath 
 of the queen of the flowery kingdom. 
 Lush grasses carpet the meadows ; vines 
 and mulberry- and fig-trees are tender 
 green, and the leaves of olive-orchards 
 shine in the sun like frosted silver. The 
 scarred forehead of Fiesole looks grimly 
 across the valley down upon her old and 
 victorious rival, Florence, and Morello 
 shows, rounded and clear, against a cloud- 
 less horizon, in serene augury of a fine 
 morrow. 
 
 Quando Monte Morello ha il cappello^ 
 Prendi il jnantello."
 
 250 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 (When Mt. Morello wears a cap, take a 
 cloak.) 
 
 Villa Careggi is well hidden from the 
 public road and eye behind her tall gates 
 and luxuriant plantations of ilex, willows, 
 and beeches. The gardens through which 
 we stroll in a sort of ecstatic trance before 
 entering the house, could not have been 
 more beautiful when II Magnifico paced 
 the alleys, in grave discussion of the Aris- 
 totelian philosophy with a learned Greek 
 guest, or chatted of Florence scandals and 
 exchanged gay repartees with his least 
 objectionable favourite, gentle Pico della 
 Mirandola, seated lovingly beside him on 
 one of the arboured stone benches near the 
 fountain-pool, masked, to-day, with lily- 
 pads. A branchy vine covers the wall 
 capped by " the prettily painted loggia, 
 where Lorenzo used to sit with his friends, 
 overlooking Val d'Arno, and glimpsing 
 the Tower of Giotto and the Dome of 
 Brunelleschi." The thousand odours 
 pressed from the wilderness of flowers 
 below by the fall of evening dews, must 
 have regaled their senses while talk and
 
 II Magnifico 251 
 
 song went on, and when the wind blew 
 from the east it would have brought the 
 sweet clangour of bells from theCampanile, 
 the Palazzo Vecchio, and a score of minor 
 towers and steeples. 
 
 The room in which II Magnifico lan- 
 guished for so many weeks in the spring 
 of 1492 that we wonder no story has come 
 to us, as from the Grand Monarque's 
 death-chamber, of sarcastic apology to his 
 courtiers for " taking such an unconscion- 
 able time in dying," overlooks the loveli- 
 est parterres of the garden. 
 
 There is modern furniture here, and we 
 gravely suspect that the mural decora- 
 tions commemorative of the glories of the 
 Medici may have been amplified and " re- 
 stored " since the eagle eyes were bleared 
 with the weary gazing upon them. But 
 the greenery, and the flush of an April 
 rain of blossoms, the fair pleasure-grounds, 
 the " tall cypress-bough," and the sheeny 
 olives outlying the garden-walls, the hazy 
 domes and turrets of the Florence he had 
 beautified and corrupted, were what we 
 see through the casement opposite the
 
 252 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 great, sombre bed in which, it is said, he 
 died. 
 
 He was but forty-four years old, and 
 for almost thirty of those years he had 
 been his own master, inventing vices when 
 the vulgar routine of familiar excesses was 
 exhausted. His forefathers had had their 
 fill of an evil vintage, and left to him a 
 heritage which, in the course of nature, 
 would have told upon his phenomenal con- 
 stitution without the sapping and mining 
 done of his own accord and at his wild 
 will. 
 
 He kept up a merry show, if not a brave 
 heart, during the first month of his illness. 
 Flatterers many, and a few true friends, 
 relieved one another in the task, more 
 difficult each day, of cheating him into 
 forgetfulness of physical agony and of 
 what these were surely, if slowly, bringing 
 toward him. 
 
 "The strangest thing of all is, that in 
 all this variety of life they cannot cite a 
 solitary act of real generosity toward his 
 people, his friends, or his kinsmen ; for 
 surely if there had been such an act, his
 
 II Magnifico 253 
 
 indefatigable flatterers would not have 
 forgotten it," Villari says, sardonically. 
 
 The assertion throws a lurid glare upon 
 that death-bed, and the emulous group 
 about it. Poets brought new verses for 
 his criticism, and the players upon instru- 
 ments were there, with professional and 
 paid wits, and knots of nobly born youths, 
 with tales of court amours and quarrels. 
 And, behind them, closing in upon them 
 in their follies, and him in his pain, a 
 cordon of ghastly shapes he alone of them 
 all saw, and even he, dauntless and defi- 
 ant of other enemies, feared with growing 
 horror. Dread and horror broke forth at 
 last. He was about to die and he would 
 not die unconfessed. But one man would 
 deal honestly with his guilty soul. He 
 bade his attendants send for Savonarola. 
 
 In turning back to the life of the Prior 
 of San Marco we read that Giovanni Pico 
 della Mirandola — " a court butterfly, and 
 the most learned creature that ever flut- 
 tered near a prince, but of amiable senti- 
 ments and tender-heartedness, and the 
 kindly insight of an unspoiled heart " —
 
 254 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 had wrought upon Lorenzo, a dozen years 
 or so before this honest hour, to recall to 
 Florence and San Marco " the only man 
 who dared stand, face to face, with him- 
 self, and tell him he had done wrong." 
 
 Our hearts are drawn out in fond ad- 
 miration for this " butterfly," and, if only 
 for the love borne him by Lorenzo, we in- 
 cline to demur at the pitiless dictum of 
 Villari. We can, and we do, believe that 
 the splendid scholar — who lent a reverent 
 ear and receptive heart to the teachings of 
 Savonarola, and who, after Lorenzo's 
 death, would have become a Dominican 
 monk and entered San Marco had not his 
 own early decease prevented the fulfillment 
 of his wish ; who, in dying, charged the 
 Prior of San Marco to see to it that he 
 was buried in the habit of the order — was, 
 as historians insist, " a noble young gentle- 
 man amid all his frippery of courtier and 
 virtuoso." He was among the last visit- 
 ors admitted to this chamber when what 
 the dying man named as " the last evening 
 of his winter " (a dreary commentary upon 
 his dazzling career !) settled darkly about
 
 II Magnifico 255 
 
 him. He had had his final discourse with 
 his son Piero, of whose disastrous sover- 
 eignty the shrewd statesman had more 
 than a rude premonition. The conversa- 
 tion was a distress, the farewell was hope- 
 less agony, and the exhausted sufferer 
 gasped out "a wish to see Pico della Mi- 
 randola again, who immediately hastened 
 to him. . . . 
 
 " It appeared as if the sweet expression 
 of that benevolent and gentle young man 
 had soothed him a little, for he said to him, 
 ' I should have died unhappy if I had not 
 first been cheered by a sight of thy face.' " 
 
 The beautiful touch of natural human 
 emotion is the only gleam that falls from 
 history or tradition across the gloom of 
 that fateful scene. 
 
 We like to think that the gentle impor- 
 tunity of this best-beloved friend was the 
 means by which the famous interview with 
 Savonarola was brought about. The Prior 
 had not always been amenable to II Mag- 
 nifico's blandishments and commands. 
 When Lorenzo was seen walking, unat- 
 tended, in the garden of San Marco, the
 
 256 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 friars, impressed as by a visit from Jove 
 in person, flew to the Prior's cell to tell 
 him of the honour conferred upon him and 
 their house. 
 
 " Has he asked to see me ?" asked Sa- 
 vonarola, just raising his head from his 
 desk, and, upon hearing that his magnifi- 
 cent guest had spoken with no one, — 
 *' Then leave him to his meditations ! " 
 
 As if Lorenzo had sought the retreat 
 for no other purpose than to think and to 
 pray. The gold put into the alms-box by 
 the lord of Florence was carefully set 
 aside from the silver and copper and sent 
 to San Martino for the poor. 
 
 " We do not want so much money," was 
 the simple excuse for the apparent un- 
 graciousness of the act, but Lorenzo com- 
 prehended that the steadfast preacher was 
 neither to be flattered nor bribed into so 
 much as a passive condoning of his sins as 
 man and ruler. It was not till Savonarola 
 was assured by a second messenger from 
 Villa Careggi that II Magnifico was really 
 dying and earnestly desirous to see him, 
 that he made ready to go to him.
 
 II Magnifico 257 
 
 He came from San Marco on foot, as 
 he was wont to travel. In the black robe 
 of his order, the cowl drawn over his sad 
 brows, he crossed the fertile valley we are 
 looking upon now, and strode up the 
 gentle eminence where Careggi sat, a 
 stately planet among her six satellite vil- 
 las, all belonging to the proud house whose 
 chief was in the death-throe. Was it 
 among the olives down there, or in the 
 broad, open road bordered by smiling 
 vineyards, or, maybe, beside the lilied 
 fountain-pool in the garden, in close view 
 of this window, that he paused to say to 
 the lay-brother in attendance upon him, — 
 " Lorenzo will die" ? He knew it as well 
 then as when, the dust of the way white 
 upon his sandals, he bent his ear to the 
 confession of the penitent. 
 
 Prominent among the " three things that 
 dragged Lorenzo back and threw him into 
 despair," and which he doubted if God 
 would ever pardon, was the murder of as 
 many of the house of Pazzi as he could 
 lay his revengeful hands upon after the 
 assassination of his young brother Giuliano
 
 258 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 and the attempt upon his own Hfe. The 
 other two were the brutal pillage of the 
 town of Volterra, and the robbery of the re- 
 ligious house of Monte delle Fanciulle. 
 
 Penitent and confessor were alone in this 
 stately chamber. Lorenzo was propped 
 1)y pillows in the bed, and Savonarola sat, 
 with bowed head, at his right hand, mur- 
 muring in the intervals of a recital that 
 grew in anguish and incoherence with the 
 rehearsal of each haunting crime, — " God 
 is good ! God is merciful ! " 
 
 But when the distracted man listened 
 for the '' absolve te'' that should follow 
 these gracious platitudes, the deep voice 
 of the Prior thrilled through the stillness 
 upon the dulling ear as his Master's may 
 liave smote that of the young ruler, and 
 in somewhat the same words : 
 
 " Three things are required of you." 
 
 We will let Villari tell the rest : 
 
 " ' And what are they, Father ?' replied 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 " Savonarola's countenance became 
 grave, and, raising the fingers of his right 
 hand, he thus began : 
 
 " ' First, — it is necessary that you
 
 II Magnifico 259 
 
 should have a full and lively faith in the 
 mercy of God.' 
 
 "'That I have, most fully.' 
 
 " ' Secondly, it is necessary to restore 
 that which you unjustly took away, or 
 enjoin your sons to restore it for you.' 
 
 " This requirement appeared to cause 
 him surprise and grief. However, with 
 an effort, he gave his consent by a nod of 
 his head. 
 
 "Savonarola then rose up, and while 
 the dying prince shrank with terror upon 
 his bed, the confessor seemed to rise above 
 himself when saying : 
 
 " * Lastly, — -yo2t must restore liberty to 
 the people of Florence / ' 
 
 " His countenance was solemn, his voice 
 almost terrible, his eyes, as if to read the 
 answer, remained fixed intently on those 
 of Lorenzo, who, collecting all the strength 
 that nature had left him, turned his back 
 on him, and scornfully, without uttering a 
 word. 
 
 " And thus Savonarola left him, with- 
 out giving him absolution ; and the Mag- 
 nificent, lacerated by remorse, soon after 
 breathed his last."
 
 XIV 
 AS IN UAVID'S DAY 
 
 261
 
 XIV 
 AS IN DAVID'S DAY 
 
 WE had talked of nothing at dinner 
 but the invitation received and ac- 
 cepted that day. 
 
 *' I have arranged for your good plea- 
 sure ' A Syrian Evening,' " said the 
 quaintly pretty note of the Syrian-born 
 hostess. "We hope to see you and your 
 friends at nine o'clock to-night." 
 
 At last our dreams of the poetry of 
 motion, as expressed by the Oriental 
 dancer, and the rich imagery of Oriental 
 improvisation, were to be fulfilled. We 
 let our imaginations revel, unchecked, in 
 our table-talk of Miriam tossing her tim- 
 brel aloft, leading the women who went 
 after her with timbrels, and the triumph- 
 ant chant that arose above the ground- 
 swell of the Red Sea. Of Jephthah's 
 263
 
 264 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 daughter, ringing and tinkhng a welcome 
 to the victorious chief. How, as far back 
 as the days of Job, the tabret was in use, 
 and men rejoiced with the timbrel and 
 harp. A pocket Webster instructed us as 
 to the identity of the tabret with the tabor 
 of later times, and that both meant a 
 small drum. 
 
 Our antiquarian prosed learnedly upon 
 what he called " Nebuchadnezzar's wind- 
 and-string band," enlightening us as to the 
 forms and uses of the ancient cornet, flute, 
 harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, until 
 affronted by the amateurish attempt of a 
 mischief-loving youth to establish a near 
 relationship between sackbut and bagpipe. 
 Whereat the man of science waxed wroth 
 and dumb. 
 
 It was, then, an expectant and gleeful 
 party that packed itself into three carriages 
 and left the walled city by the Jaffa gate, 
 turning quickly to the right and into a 
 maze of muddy lanes, lined on both sides 
 with stone walls topped with bunches of 
 dried thorn-bushes, laid in mortar, after 
 the manner of the broken-bottle chevaux
 
 As in David's Day 265 
 
 de frise of more enlightened lands. A 
 moonlight drive of half a mile brought us 
 to the gate of a garden surrounding one of 
 the square stone houses that are springing 
 up rapidly in the suburbs of Jerusalem. 
 Our host met us at the gate, and led us 
 through the porch into a big hall which 
 took up half of the ground-floor of the 
 dwelling. We had but a hasty view of a 
 lighted room packed with "people making 
 a noise," as we were hurried across one 
 corner of this hall and into an inner apart- 
 ment, neatly furnished in European style 
 as a parlour. There we were seated close 
 to the open door of communication with 
 the larger room. All the light in the 
 parlour came through this door, and we 
 now perceived that the men of our com- 
 pany were theoretically invisible, or, at 
 best, represented to the revellers by their 
 astral bodies. 
 
 The merry-makers were all women, and 
 a certain fine unconsciousness of the exist- 
 ence of the foreign spectators was in- 
 imitable and impressive. Not an eye 
 wandered in our direction, although two
 
 266 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 foreign consuls, whom most of the as- 
 sembl)' must have known by sight, were 
 with us, and a young English traveller, as 
 brawny as Hercules and handsome as 
 Apollo, leaned against the door-frame 
 just where the light from the outer room 
 threw his profile into bold relief upon the 
 dark background. 
 
 The noise, unabated by our intrusion, 
 went on steadily when we were seated 
 and could define and classify the hubbub. 
 The performers, and a few old women 
 with babies in their laps, sat flat upon the 
 matted floor, their feet tucked under them. 
 All were in gala dress — jewelry gleaming 
 upon arms, hair, and hands. The married 
 women wore the picturesque mcndel. This 
 is a square of thin, flowered — embroidered 
 or plain — coloured muslin, edged with silk 
 lace. When the wearer is indoors, one- 
 half of the mcndel is folded back, kerchief- 
 wise, upon the top of her head. When 
 she goes abroad, she pulls this over her 
 face, making a triangular veil through 
 which she can see, but which masks her 
 features.
 
 As in David's Day 267 
 
 Each of the younger women had a 
 musical instrument of some sort. A min- 
 iature drum, — which we took to be the 
 " tabor " or " tabret," — set on the floor in 
 front of her and beaten with the knuckles, 
 was the most popular. There were also 
 tambourines (timbrels ?) and cymbals, and 
 something, not unlike a mandolin in shape, 
 with short, taut strings that twanged as 
 shrilly as cicadae, above the shallow roll of 
 drum and tambourine. 
 
 " I think," said the Mischief-lover, 
 meditatively, with a demure glance at the 
 Antiquarian, " I — am — quite — sure — that 
 those are sackbuts ! Or, maybe, dulci- 
 mers." 
 
 There was no time in the " music." 
 Our ears presently discerned rhythm ; a 
 wave-like vibration in the drumming, hum- 
 ming, and shrilling, that doubtless re- 
 presented time to the initiated. After 
 the hostess had made us welcome, she 
 took her stand in a cleared space in the 
 middle of the hall. Holding a tambourine, 
 and shaking it as she moved, with now and 
 then a touch of a deft thumb to the tight
 
 268 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 " head," she began to dance, very slowly 
 and gracefully, advancing a few steps and 
 receding as many, smiling and beckoning 
 to one and another of the cross-legged 
 figures. She kept this up for several 
 minutes before a plump, black-eyed little 
 body arose from a corner and obeyed the 
 mute invitation. She was dressed in a 
 bright blue silk gown, unpicturesquely 
 Parisian in cut and fit. The Oriental 
 element was supplied by the blue inendel, 
 and by ropes of gold chains dangling below 
 her girdle, which was also of gold, and 
 flexible like the fine meshes of a coat of 
 mail. 
 
 Taking the tambourine from the other's 
 hand, she went through the same/^i- sctil ; 
 five or six steps forward, as many back- 
 ward, varied by swayings of the body 
 above the waist-line, whirling the tambour- 
 ine about her head, and shaking it to the 
 right and left. The steps were a shufifie, 
 her feet never leaving the floor. While 
 she danced, the " rubadub " of tabrets and 
 tambourines, the twanging of the mando- 
 lins, and the measured clapping of hands
 
 As in David's Day 269 
 
 (" For all the world like ' Pease porridge 
 hot,' " said the Mischief-lover in my ear) 
 went on with increasing fervour. 
 
 " Sometimes they are really intoxicated 
 by the music," said a consul's wife, who 
 had lived in Jerusalem ten years. " I 
 have felt the exhilaration myself upon 
 several occasions. There is something in 
 the rhythmic beat that gets into the blood 
 and the head." 
 
 It did not get into ours. Indeed, the 
 noise was becoming tiresome and the 
 spectacle monotonous when — after a suc- 
 cession of eight or ten women had had 
 the floor, each repeating her predecessor's 
 motions — the hostess again appeared, and 
 clapped her hands sharply three times. 
 Servants answered the signal, and passed, 
 first to us, then to the performers, trays 
 containing tiny cups of black coffee, glasses 
 of native wine, and wedges of layer-cake, 
 filled with dead-sweet conserves that made 
 the wine taste as sour as vinegar. 
 
 While the refreshments were going 
 around, a woman's voice was raised from 
 the back of the hall. She was young and
 
 270 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 rather comely, and her scarlet skirt did 
 not quite hide a pair of trim feet encased 
 in white silk stockings and red slippers. 
 Raisinor her tabret to the level of her fore- 
 head, and dealing it a smart thump to at- 
 tract attention, she uttered in a high 
 monotone a string of rapid Arabic, getting 
 in, I should say, fifty words between every 
 two breaths, and winding up all with a 
 screeched '' a-a-a-h-h / " of which written 
 words can give no adequate idea. 
 
 Our dragoman interpreted the outburst. 
 It was a florid panegyric upon our host, 
 his many virtues, personal gifts, and worthy 
 deeds, and the expression of a hope that 
 he and his posterity would live forever. 
 
 A second breathless and headlong reci- 
 tation from another woman did the decent 
 and dutiful thing by the hostess, who, 
 being in sight, waved and kissed her hand 
 in acknowledgment. Other personages 
 whom the company delighted to honour 
 were dry-toasted in due order. Each im- 
 provisation ended with the unwritable, 
 ear-piercing '' a-a-a-h-h ! '' always running 
 up the scale in precisely the same key and
 
 As in Davids Day 271 
 
 ending abruptly upon the highest note of 
 the gamut. 
 
 The hostess brought forward next a 
 new and striking figure. 
 
 "A distinguished professional," com- 
 mented the interpreter. " She has been 
 married twice, both times to white men, 
 who were won by her remarkable talents." 
 
 Her good looks had no share in the con- 
 quest. She was a Nubian — full-blooded, 
 as was proved by her coal-black skin and 
 woolly hair — broad of shoulder, and long 
 of limb. Her gown of dark blue cloth was 
 girdled loosely with a crimson sash, and 
 fell in easy folds to her feet. She looked 
 like what was called in ante-bellum par- 
 lance, "a field-hand." From every side 
 of the great hall arose a wild clamour of 
 beaten drums, and clanging cymbals, 
 shaken tambourines, and clapping hands, 
 an accompaniment that was not inter- 
 mitted through what followed. The Nu- 
 bian smiled widely upon her admirers, 
 squatted upon the mat, and began to bat- 
 ter a small drum furiously, rocking from 
 side to side, then back and forth, rolling
 
 2 72 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 up her eyes, and showing a double row of 
 white teeth in a grimace of cumulative 
 ecstasy. Bounding suddenly to her full 
 height by one surprising effort of her sup- 
 ple body, not touching the floor with her 
 hands, she entered upon a series of spiral 
 exercises, keeping her feet perfectly still 
 as a pivotal centre, and swinging outward 
 from them. The tabret was pounded 
 madly all the time. 
 
 This dizzying exhibition ended, she drew 
 a white handkerchief from her bosom, 
 wrapped it about her left arm, and went 
 through the motions of dandling and 
 hushing a child to sleep, crooning a fan- 
 tastic, tuneless lullaby, and shuffling her 
 feet in time with it. Waking the baby 
 with a genuine negro '' ki-yi ! " and shak- 
 ing the handkerchief into the air, she 
 danced to a more lively measure, throw- 
 ing herself forward, then backward, farther 
 and farther each time, until a topple and 
 fall seemed inevitable. In one of the for- 
 ward inclinations she dexterously spread 
 her handkerchief upon the floor, and in 
 another picked it up with her teeth, a feat
 
 A SYRIAN PROFESSIONAL DANCER AND MUSICIAN. 
 From photograph in Christian Herald Collection.
 
 As in David's Day 273 
 
 that elicited deafening applause. A final 
 figure of the so-called dance bore some 
 resemblance, as I was told afterwards, to 
 the objectionable dansede ventre. In com- 
 fortable ignorance of the circumstance we 
 looked on, unmoved and unsympathetic, 
 while the assembly, lined up three deep 
 against the walls of the central hall, vented 
 their delight in louder and faster drum- 
 mings and clapping of hands. 
 
 A laugh, smothered by politeness as 
 soon as it was born, rippled through the 
 group of unseen lookers-on as the hand- 
 some Hercules in the doorway turned to 
 say, sotto voce, but energetically, while the 
 Nubian was in the thick of her triumphs : 
 
 " By Jove ! what a fool King Herod 
 must have been ! " 
 
 Before twelve o'clock, set bv us as the 
 hour of departure, curiosity had given 
 place to ennui, and ennui deepened into 
 boredom of a pronounced type. We were 
 glad to make our exit with the same pre- 
 tence of stealth that had attended our 
 entrance. The cool, delicious dampness 
 of a Syrian winter night that met us with-
 
 2 74 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 out made us comprehend what the atmos- 
 phere had been within. The consul's 
 wife told us, on the way home, that the 
 scene we were leaving behind us repre- 
 sented all that the Syrian woman ever 
 knows of a " revel." She never speaks to 
 a man until she is married, unless he be 
 her near kinsman. After marriage, even 
 stricter laws govern her association with 
 the other sex. They have no dancing, or 
 conversation, or dinner-parties where men 
 and women meet on equal and pleasant 
 social terms ; no libraries and no clubs 
 where women can acquire knowledge and 
 exchange views upon higher topics than 
 the details of their dull, eventless lives. 
 The fifty-odd women we had left sitting 
 cross-legged on the matting, their backs 
 against the wall, their tabrets on the floor 
 in front of them, just as we had found 
 them three hours before, would talk of 
 this evening of dissipation for weeks to 
 come. 
 
 The Mischief-lover's face was sombre 
 in the moonlight ; his tone was regretful. 
 
 " The evening has been full of disillu-
 
 As in David's Day 275 
 
 sions," he lamented. " And I 'm afraid, if 
 the truth could be known, we should learn 
 that the women who came out, singing 
 and dancing, to meet King Saul with tab- 
 rets and other instruments, and answered 
 one another as they played, rattled off, — 
 ' Saul-hath -slain-his-thousands-and-David- 
 his-ten-thousands-rt;-^-/^-/^ / ' just as those 
 girls ' said their pieces.' The East is a 
 changeless land, you know — more 's the 
 pity ! " • 
 
 At noon on the morrow we sent a note 
 of thanks to our hostess. The messengfer 
 brought back word that she was not yet 
 out of bed. The fun (?) had raged on 
 until 7ime d clock a.m., and the gracious 
 mistress of ceremonies was " somewhat 
 fatigued."
 
 XV 
 
 IN VILLETTE 
 
 277
 
 XV 
 
 IN VILLETTE 
 
 THE building in the Rue d'Isabelle 
 will shortly be pulled down." 
 
 " The many admirers of Charlotte 
 Bronte will regret to learn that the Pen- 
 sionnat Heger, made famous by her novel 
 Villette, has been demolished to make 
 way for a row of modern houses." 
 
 Both of these items were read by us on 
 the steamer which brought us from Amer- 
 ica, four months ago. As newspaper 
 paragraphs go, they should have had 
 weight in directing the trend of our roam- 
 ings on this, our first day in Brussels. 
 Had our faith in them been positive it is 
 doubtful if we should have come to the 
 miniature Paris. Waterloo was not an 
 irresistible attraction, nor did the lace 
 warehouses turn the scales of our unfriv-
 
 28o Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 olous mood. We are here because Brus- 
 sels is " Yillette," and an impulse we are 
 ready, in the end, to respect as inspira- 
 tion, moved us to see, with bodily vision, 
 a locality familiar to the mind's eye, to 
 wit, Madame Beck's " Pensionnat de 
 Demoiselles," in the " Rue Fossette." 
 
 We called it by the every-day name of 
 Rue d'Isabelle in consulting the feminine 
 Autocrat of our pension dejeuner-table, a 
 suave Presence of boundless information 
 and limited English vocabulary. She took 
 refuge in Brussels-French in the desire to 
 be fluent, yet explicit. She had heard 
 of Charlotte Bronte's historical (!) novel, 
 and that the scene was laid in the respect- 
 able and eminent Pensionnat of Monsieur 
 and Madame Heger. In passing, she 
 might be permitted to say that the Pension- 
 nat was in the Avenue Louise, not in the 
 Rue d'Isabelle. The trifling mistake was 
 quite pardonable in Mesdames. Both were 
 the names of women. Madame Heger 
 died in 1889, and it is now three years 
 since the lamented demise of Monsieur 
 Heger at the great age of eighty-seven.
 
 In Villette 281 
 
 Mademoiselle, their accomplished daugh- 
 ter, still conducts the school for young 
 ladies in the Avenue Louise. If Mes- 
 dames would have the goodness to look 
 from the window of the salon, she — the 
 Autocrat — would take pleasure in indicat- 
 ing the ver)^ handsome house. 
 
 It is a handsome house, large, square, 
 white, with a plentiful complement of 
 windows, a very model of monumental 
 and prosperous respectability, and we 
 forthwith disbelieved in it with all our 
 might. The situation upon the corner of 
 a spick-and-span Boulevard gave the lie 
 direct to our preconceptions of the som- 
 bre age of Madame Beck's Pensionnat. 
 When inquiries of neighbouring shop- 
 keepers extracted the admission that there 
 was not, and never had been, a Rue d'lsa- 
 belle within two miles of Avenue Louise, 
 we should have given up the quest in de- 
 spair, but for a conviction that would 
 not down at talk of demolition and over- 
 turning and recasting of streets and 
 houses. In the persuasion, as irrational 
 as it was obstinate, that we knew Brussels
 
 282 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 as Villette better than our well-informed 
 landlady, we repudiated her pilotage and 
 trusted ourselves recklessly to the chart 
 furnished by Charlotte herself. 
 
 Lucy Snowe had followed Dr. John — 
 then a stranger who spoke English and 
 offered to guide her to her inn — " through 
 the double gloom of trees and fog," across 
 a park, and, losing her bearings after he 
 left her, strayed to a flight of steps, which 
 she descended. "In a very quiet and 
 comparatively clean and well-paved street," 
 was the Pensionnat. 
 
 Our first step was to find the Park. It 
 was half-an-hour's drive from the square 
 white house on the spick-and-span Boule- 
 vard. Let me say here, in justice to the 
 Autocrat, that the building in question, as 
 transpired subsequently, really is the Pen- 
 sionnat Heger and is presided over by 
 Madame Beck's daughters. If we had 
 sought information there touching the 
 ci-devant pupil-teacher of their lady-moth- 
 er's reign, would we have met Fifine 
 and D^siree ? Madame refused to see 
 Mrs. Gaskell when she would have ** in-
 
 In Villette 283 
 
 terviewed " her on the subject of Char- 
 lotte's residence in her school, Villette, in 
 spite of the author's emphatic interdiction, 
 having been translated into French by 
 that time, and read by Madame and her 
 circle. The probability that the aversion 
 to the Brontes and all that pertained to 
 them is hereditary, forbade the thought 
 of application to the Demoiselles Heger 
 in our dilemma. 
 
 The Park is bright and dry to-day, yet 
 a subtle sense of familiarity with trees 
 and walks besets us as we enter it. The 
 belief that we are following John Bretton's 
 " frank tread " and Lucy's soundless foot- 
 steps, takes fast hold of us. Without at- 
 tempting to analyse the sensation, we 
 quicken our pace and are led straight to 
 the top of a flight of stone steps, with a 
 drop of, perhaps, a dozen feet, into a quiet 
 street, and at the bottom a long block of 
 houses which we immediately identify as 
 the " Pensionnat de Demoiselles." 
 
 Fm-de-silcle scepticism halts us even 
 here. Instead of going straight to our 
 work, we turn weakly aside into the Eng-
 
 284 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 lish Bank close to the short stairway, and 
 have the Q-ra.ce to blush at the uninten- 
 tional rebuke of our lack of faith in our 
 " inward leading," conveyed in the civil 
 reply to our inquiries. 
 
 " You have only to go down those steps 
 and you are there ! The house is now oc- 
 cupied by a public school. Pulled down ! 
 Bless me ! nothing of the sort ! It stands 
 just where it did, and as it did, fifty years 
 ago." 
 
 By the means truthfully recorded here, 
 we have arrived at our goal, Villette and 
 Lucy Snowe are more trustworthy ciceroni 
 than Brussels-bred Autocrat and shop- 
 keepers. 
 
 Our ring at the door is answered by a 
 black-eyed sub-teacher, whose position is 
 precisely what Charlotte's was during her 
 second term at the Pensionnat Heger, 
 after she had returned without Emily, and 
 alone. The guide is polite and willing, 
 and, as we have chanced to call upon a 
 fcsta holiday, is cordially at our service. 
 As she does not speak English, she has 
 never read Villette^ she says, and we re-
 
 In Villette 285 
 
 frain from allusion to the obnoxious French 
 edition, 
 
 " But I know the book quite well," she 
 continues. " So many English and Ameri- 
 cans — many more Americans than Eng- 
 lish — come here every year, and talk, oh, 
 so much ! of Mademoiselle Lucie and 
 Madame Beck and Mademoiselle Char- 
 lotte, and the Ghost " — laughing brightly 
 — " that I seem to myself to have read of 
 them all." 
 
 In forecasting this visit, our minds were 
 taken up by thoughts of the two Yorkshire 
 girls, abruptly transplanted to the foreign 
 pensionnat, as out-of-place, and as ill-at- 
 ease as would be two larks snared upon 
 the Haworth moors and kept in a Belgian 
 cage. We lost Charlotte and Emily as 
 soon as we struck upon Dr. Bretton's track, 
 and felt the presence of the pale mute 
 shadow that " would have followed that 
 frank tread through continual night, to 
 the world's end." 
 
 I have always maintained that Lucy 
 was more truly in love with this " true 
 young English gentleman," with his
 
 286 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 " beamy head," " bonny wells of eyes, arch 
 mouth, and gay smile," than with the " dark 
 little man, pungent and austere," who, even 
 to her would-be partial eyes, " seemed a 
 harsh apparition, with his close-shorn black 
 head, broad, sallow brow, thin cheek, wide 
 and quivering nostril." Affection for the 
 one was a glad, spontaneous upspringing ; 
 for the other, a matter of painstaking cul- 
 tivation. Long after she believed that she 
 had found her soul-counterpart in the acerb 
 Professor, the confession escapes her in 
 meditating upon what she had denied to 
 her trusting heart : 
 
 " Was this feeling dead ? I do not know, 
 but it was buried. Sometimes I thought 
 the tomb unquiet and dreamed strangely of 
 disturbed earth, and of hair still golden and 
 living, obtruded through coffin chinks." 
 
 The man she loved and the man who 
 loved her, keep step with us in our pass- 
 age through the corridors and the class- 
 rooms where Lucy gave English lessons, 
 and conquered the mutinous " titled belles 
 in the first row who had sat down prede- 
 termined that a bonne d'enfants should
 
 In Villette 287 
 
 not be set over them," and locked up 
 Catalonian Dolores in the book-closet, 
 still to be seen. Bare, clean, and comfort- 
 less as is the suite, it was yet drearier be- 
 fore the larger rooms were divided by 
 partitions for the convenience of the pre- 
 sent occupants. The long classe, cold at 
 early morning and at night, " with the 
 nipping severity of a Continental winter," 
 which Lucy paced fast to keep herself 
 warm when the " popish lecture pieiise from 
 that guilty old book containing legends of 
 the saints, was brought out in the only 
 warm place in the house, the refectory — 
 the scene of the Etude du soir" — has 
 been cut up into three compartments. It 
 was her chosen haunt when she was off 
 duty, her promenade, her study, her ora- 
 tory, her resort, when physical exercise 
 and solitude were absolute needs to the 
 overwrought spirit. She was "fortu- 
 nate if the moon shone, and, if there 
 were stars, soon reconciled to their dim 
 gleam, or even to the total eclipse of 
 their absence." 
 
 At least we can look out of the windows
 
 288 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 through which their Hght crossed her 
 lonely beat. In the refectory we provoke 
 the curiosity of our little companion by 
 setting the stage for the ridiculous exhi- 
 bition of "the wicked, venomous little 
 man's" temper, on the evening when 
 *' Mees Lucie" "swept away her working 
 materials to clear space for his book, and 
 withdrew herself to make room for his 
 person," and, " flint and tinder that he 
 was ! he struck and took fire directly." 
 
 How well we know it all ! and how 
 present and vivid is the reproduction here 
 in the marble-paved room, looking out 
 upon the garden which we are reserving 
 for the last and choicest morccau of the 
 continual feast ! 
 
 Before tasting this we mount to the 
 dormitories. Our vivacious conductor is 
 eager to show us where, in the now empty 
 room, — all the pupils in the public school 
 being '' cxterncs^' — Charlotte and Emily 
 Bronte's beds used to stand. In consid- 
 eration of the " reserved habits of the 
 English," they were allowed to draw a 
 curtain between that extremity of the
 
 In Villette 289 
 
 large apartment and the twenty beds that 
 filled the remaining space. 
 
 We refuse to see anybody but Lucy 
 Snowe, lonely and wakeful, while 
 "stretched on the nineteen beds lay nine- 
 teen forms at full length, and motion- 
 less " ; Lucy, battling, in the desperation 
 of a drowning wretch, with grim Reason, 
 who bade her put at once out of her mind, 
 and finally, the vision of golden-haired 
 John Bretton, " good and sweet, but not 
 for her," and revel no more in the 
 "strange, sweet insanity," luring her to 
 forgetfulness of the truth that she "was 
 born only to work for a piece of bread ; 
 to await the pains of death, and steadily, 
 through all life, to despond." To the 
 dormitory she stole with Dr. John's first 
 letter in her hand, " in haste and trem- 
 bling lest Madame should creep up-stairs 
 and spy her," and " folding the treasure, 
 yet all fair and inviolate, in silver paper, 
 put it into a casket and the casket into a 
 drawer of the bureau " (we designate the 
 very corner then filled by the bureau), 
 " shut up box and drawer, reclosed, re-
 
 290 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 locked the dormitory, and descended to 
 classc, feeling as if fairy-tales were true, 
 and fairy gifts no dream." 
 
 The dormitory, where we select her 
 " own casement " out of which she " leaned 
 on summer evenings, as ever solitary, to 
 look out upon the gay little city, and hear 
 the band play in the park, thinking mean- 
 time my own thoughts, living my own life 
 in my own still shadow-world." 
 
 We open the casement to see the ledge 
 on which she sat through the thunder- 
 storm that awoke all the sleepers in the 
 dormitory. While the rest knelt around 
 the night-lamp, praying aloud, she re- 
 mained without, upon her perch, her feet 
 upon the roof of a lower adjoining build- 
 
 " It was wet, it was wild, it was pitch- 
 dark. I could not go in. Too resistless 
 was the delight of staying with the wild 
 hour, black, and full of thunder, pealing 
 out such an ode as lanoruaore never deliv- 
 ered to man." 
 
 "The attic was no pleasant place," we 
 quote in English on entering what is
 
 In Villctte 291 
 
 gained by another flight of stairs. "In 
 summer weather it was hot as Africa, in 
 winter it was always cold as Greenland. 
 Well was it known to be tenanted by rats, 
 by black beetles and by cockroaches — 
 nay, rumour affirmed that the ghostly 
 Nun of the garden had once been seen 
 there." 
 
 The sub-teacher's laugh is as ready as 
 light. She has caught the sense of the 
 last words. Tripping over the dusty, 
 echoing floor, she points to a small win- 
 dow or glazed trap-door in the sloping 
 roof, dim and cobwebby, for the attic is 
 disused now, even as a lumber room : 
 
 ''Par /<i/" she says, and we see that 
 the trick of the pseudo ghost is known to 
 her. 
 
 Lucy did not believe in the Nun when 
 she " opened the skylight, dragged a 
 large, empty chest beneath it, and, hav- 
 ing mounted upon a smaller box, as- 
 cended this species of extempore throne," 
 and began the study of the part forced 
 upon her by the remorseless Professor. 
 But she saw the apparition on the winter
 
 292 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 night when she sought the " deep, black, 
 cold garret," to read, in the solitude she 
 could get nowhere else, the letter she had 
 locked away at noon, the seal unbroken. 
 
 " That present moment had no pain, no 
 blot, no want. Full, pure, perfect, it 
 deeply blessed me. . . . Dr. John ! 
 you pained me afterwards. Forgiven be 
 every ill — freely forgiven — for the sake of 
 that one dear, remembered good." 
 
 Then, a movement in the obscure re- 
 cess behind her, and — " I saw in the middle 
 of that ghostly chamber a figure all black 
 or white ; the skirts straight, narrow, 
 black ; the head bandaged, veiled, white." 
 
 Lucy ! still, Lucy ! and nowhere are her 
 being and her presence a more vital actu- 
 ality than in the garden behind the low 
 pile of school buildings. The grounds of 
 the Pensionnat are no longer spacious. 
 At least one-half of the original garden 
 has been cut off and built up with new 
 houses. The forbidden walk {l^alUe dd- 
 feiidue) remains in part, although Methu- 
 selah, the ancient pear-tree — "dead" in 
 Lucy's and Charlotte's time, "all but a
 
 In Villettc 293 
 
 few boughs, which still faithfully renewed 
 their perfumed snow in spring, and their 
 honey-sweet pendants in autumn " — per- 
 ished down to the root long ago. The 
 large berceaii, or arbour, shaded by the 
 acacia, is gone, but the trellised walk 
 skirting the high, grey wall, "where jas- 
 mine and ivy met and were married," is 
 the same in which Charlotte and Emily 
 took their silent " constitutional " in all 
 weathers. Here Lucy encountered Ma- 
 dame Beck in her nightly round of 
 surveillance, after the casket and note 
 had fallen "from the window high in the 
 wall of the adjacent college buildings " 
 (we look up at the identical casement), 
 and Dr. John, having seen it dropped, 
 came to hlint for it and to save Ginevra 
 Fanshawe from disgrace. 
 
 Villette is not fiction, as far as the set- 
 ting of the story is concerned. Every 
 feature of house and environs is drawn 
 with the fidelity of a photograph, taken 
 by an artist and developed by an adept. 
 That Madame Beck, M. Paul Emmanuel, 
 and Ginevra Fanshawe were painted from,
 
 294 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 and to, the life, we are informed by Char- 
 lotte's schoolfellows and others who knew 
 the unconscious sitters. Does this ac- 
 count for the spell that has brought us to 
 the spot and makes us live out the won- 
 derful tale now that we are here ? 
 
 The book is a unique. For actors, we 
 have the teachers and pupils of the most 
 conventional of conventional and Conti- 
 nental boarding-schools. In a confiden- 
 tial home-letter, Charlotte writes of these, 
 her associates : 
 
 " Amongst 120 persons which compose 
 the daily population of this house, I can 
 discern only one or two who deserve any- 
 thing like regard. They have not in- 
 tellect or politeness, or good nature, or 
 good feeling. They are nothing. They 
 have no sensations themselves, and they 
 excite none. . . . The phlegm that 
 thickens their blood is too gluey to boil'' 
 
 For theatre, Villctte had the four walls 
 of the Pensionnat, and this walled-in gar- 
 den. We have, it is true, infrequent 
 glimpses of streets in the old parts of the 
 then small city of Brussels, of La Ter-
 
 In Villette 295 
 
 rasse, the Bretton country-house, and the 
 salon of the de Bassompierres in the Hotel 
 Crecy, but the action centres in this dull 
 house and in the grounds — " a trite, down- 
 trodden place in the broad, vulgar middle 
 of the day," — and at all seasons tamely un- 
 interesting to all but Lucy Snowe, and to 
 the oenius that conceived and brouQrht her 
 forth. Villette was written some }'ears after 
 Charlotte's connection with the school, 
 as pupil and as teacher, ceased. It is not 
 possible for one who has read the book to 
 visit Pensionnat and garden without com- 
 prehending that it "came" to her here. 
 
 After Emily went back to Yorkshire, 
 never to return to the hated school-life, 
 her sister seemed, to the few who cared to 
 notice her, utterly alone, her evening strolls 
 in the " forbidden walk," the twilight rev- 
 eries upon the rustic seat at the far end of 
 " the strait and narrow path," — the bench 
 she had "reclaimed from mould and funofi " 
 — melancholy and purposeless enough to 
 sink the foreign girl into the slough of 
 imbecility, or to drive her mad. Between 
 her and these alternative fates stood Lucy
 
 296 Where Ghosts Walk 
 
 and her story, with aU that entered into 
 the growth thereof. 
 
 "In catalepsy and a dead trance I stu- 
 diously held the quick of my nature," are 
 words she put into Lucy's mouth. 
 
 The quick of Charlotte's nature was in- 
 stinct with potent germs of thought. At 
 eventide, and in the noon and holiday 
 lingerings in the sequestered alley, shunned 
 by other teachers, and prohibited to the 
 scholars because of the college boarding- 
 houses flanking it — the still air took life ; 
 at the lifting of the wand she alone knew 
 that she carried, and even she did not 
 value aright, the dusky solitude was peo- 
 pled with those who left no room for re- 
 gret at the loss of visible companionship. 
 She tells it all to us in pages that sparkle 
 with humour and beautiful fancies, and 
 glow with passion. 
 
 Legends more than half forgotten, even 
 in Brussels, connect the sunken square 
 about the Pensionnat Heger with tourna- 
 ments and knightly vows and mediaeval 
 romances of various complexions. 
 
 " There was a tradition that Madame
 
 In Villette 297 
 
 Beck's house had, in old days, been a con- 
 vent. That, in years gone by — before the 
 city had overspread this quarter, and when 
 it was tilled ground and avenue, and such 
 deep and leafy seclusion as ought to em- 
 bosom a religious house — Something had 
 happened on this site, which, arousing 
 fear and inflicting horror, had left to the 
 place the inheritance of a Ghost Story." 
 
 The trivial circumstance that, fifty-seven 
 years ago, a country parson's daughter, 
 plain, provincial in dress and carriage, and 
 already in her thirtieth year, studied, 
 worked, and suffered in this ugly range of 
 houses, and dreamed her own dreams in 
 the old garden, now chill with the shadow 
 of encroaching walls, makes all that went 
 before her residence here like a rubbed 
 pencil-sketch set beside a canvas eloquent 
 with the imagery of genius, transcribed by 
 a master magician's hand. 
 
 THE END
 
 INDEX 
 
 Adriatic, The, 190, 201, 225 
 Agolanti, Francesco, 152, 156, 157, 160 
 Alfieri, 220 
 AHghieri, Dante {sc-^ Dante) 
 
 Jacopo, 98, 100 
 
 Pietro, q8, 100 
 
 The, 86, 91, 92 
 
 Alloway Kirkyard, 21 
 Altinum, 187 
 Amadori, Padre, 223 
 Amieri, Bernard, 157 
 
 House of, 154 
 
 Angelo, Michael, 85 
 Argyle, Countess of, 4 
 Arthur's Seat, 10 
 Ashburton, Lady, 76, 77 
 
 Lord, 72 
 
 Avenue Louise, 280, 281 
 Avignon, 141 
 
 Ayr, public-house, 26 
 Ayrshire, 25, 28 
 
 Baptistery (Torcello), 190 
 
 Bardi, Simone di, 89-91 
 
 Barnet, Bessy, 65 
 
 Basil, The Emperor, 191 
 
 Bassompierre, de, 295 
 
 Beaton, Mary, 10, 15 
 
 Beatrice (Portinari), 85-89, 91, 94, 100, loi 
 
 Beck, Madame, 280-282, 285, 293, 297 
 
 Benincasa, Catherine, 124-127, 130-134, 137, 138, 143 
 
 Giacomo, 124-126, 130 
 
 Lapa, 125, 130 
 
 Bernardino, Occhino, 133
 
 300 Index 
 
 Blackwood, 170 
 
 Boccaccio, 89, 99, 113, 150, 152, 227 
 
 Boleyn, Anne, 31, 33 
 
 Bologna, 98, 208 
 
 Boyne, Lady, 10 
 
 Braccio forte, The, 223 
 
 Brawne, Fanny, 171-175, 177-179 
 
 Mrs., 169, 177, 180 
 
 Bretton, Dr. John, 282, 283, 285, 289, 292, 293, 295 
 Bronte, Charlotte, 279, 280, 282-285, 2S8, 292-295. 
 
 Emily, 284, 285, 28S, 293, 295, 296 
 
 Brontes, The, 283 
 
 Brown, Cliarles Armitage, 173 
 Brussels, 279-281, 294, 296 
 Burke, Edmund, 55 
 Burns country. The, 28 
 Monument, The, 26 
 
 Robert, 19, 23, 26, 28 
 
 William, 21 
 
 Byron, Ada, 216 
 
 Lord, 170, 208-214, 216-220, 225, 227, 229 
 
 Campanile (Giotto's), 151, 153, 250 
 
 (Torcello), 188, 190, 201, 203 
 
 Careggi, Villa, 242, 247, 250, 256, 257 
 Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 65, 68, 70-73, 75, 78, 80 
 
 Thomas, 67, 68, 70, 72-74, 76-78 
 
 Carlyles, The, 72 
 
 Caroline, Queen, 215 
 
 Caterina, Santa, 123, 144, (s^e Benincasa, Catherine) 
 
 Cathedral (Florence), 151, 153, 234, 238, 239, 242, 251 
 
 (Torcello), 188 
 
 Chambers, Robert, 6 
 Charles IL, of England, 54 
 
 v., The Emperor, 133 
 
 Chatterton, Thomas, 55 
 
 Cheese, Olde Cheshire, The, 49, 52, 61 
 
 Cheyne Row, No. 24, 65, 75 
 
 Clement VIL, 222 
 
 Colonna, Vittoria, 85 
 
 Constantine, The Emperor, 191 
 
 Constantinople, 191, 199, 200 
 
 Court, Wine, 50 
 
 Cowper, William, 85 
 
 Craigenputtock, 72, 75
 
 Index 301 
 
 Dante (Alighieri), 85-87, 89-96, 98, 100, 208, 210, 219, 220, 
 
 222, 224, 225, 227, 229, 243, 245 
 Darnley, Henry, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 15 
 Dauphine of France, 14 
 Dickens, Charles, 55 
 Donati, Corso di, 95 
 
 Gemma, 91-94, 96, 98-100 
 
 Manetti, 91 
 
 The, 92 
 
 Doon, The, 28 
 Dryden, 227 
 
 Duomo (Florence), 105, 106, 112, 151, 233, 234, 237, 240, 250 
 
 (Torcello), 190, 201 
 
 Dtirer, Albert, 71 
 
 Edinburgh Castle, 9, 10, 12 
 Edward VI. (of England), 32, 44 
 Eliot, George, 109 
 Elizabeth, Princess, The, 32, 38, 39 
 
 Queen, 4, 14, 43 
 
 Emmanuel, M. Paul, 293 
 
 Fanshawe, Ginevra, 293 
 
 Fiesole, 249 
 
 Florence, 85, 94, 98-101, 107, 109, no, 114, 118, 141, 151, 
 
 154, 259 
 Fontana della Barca, 165 
 Fonte, Branda, 128 
 Forster, John, 55, 73 
 Fossette, La Rue, 280 
 Fra Angelico, 108 
 
 Bartolommeo, 108 
 
 Froude, Anthony, 73, 77 
 Fullonica, The, 124 
 
 Gamba, The family of, 210 
 Gardiner, Stephen, 41 
 Garibaldi, Anita, 2oq 
 
 Giuseppe, 209 
 
 Garrick, David, 55 
 Gaskell, Mrs., 282 
 
 Ginevra (Amieri), 149, 150, 152, 154, 156, 158, 160 
 
 Giotto, 151 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 49, 53, 54 
 
 Grade, Patriarch of, 195, 198
 
 o^^ Index 
 
 ("irazzini, 244 
 
 (Gregory XL, Pope, 141, 144 
 (iuardarello, Guardarelli, 224 
 Guiccioli, Count, 212 
 
 Countess, 210, 212-215, 217, 2i3 
 
 Gwynne, Nell, 54 
 
 Hampton Court gallery, 36 
 
 Palace, 31, 32, 34, 37, 38, 40, 42-44 
 
 Hawkwood, Sir John, 144 
 
 Haworth, 285 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 55 
 Heger, Madame, 280 
 
 Mademoiselle, 281, 2S3 
 
 Pensionnat, 279, 282. 284, 296 
 
 Henry VIII. of England, 31, 32, 43, 44 
 Herrick, Robert, 55 
 
 Hill, Rowland, 136 
 Holbein, School of, 32 
 Holyrood Palace, 3, 9, 10 
 Hood, Thomas, 55 
 Howard, Katherine, 32, 43 
 Hunt, Leigh, 73 
 
 Irving, Edward, 74 
 Istria, 224 
 
 Jaffa (The gate), 264 
 
 James I. of England, S, 13, 15 
 
 " Jane the Fool," 38 
 
 Jerrold, Douglas, 55 
 
 Jerusalem, 265 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 49, 53 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 55 
 
 Keats, George, 172 
 
 John, 165-16S, 170, 171, 173, 176-178, i8a 
 
 Leech, John, 55 
 Leo X., 222 
 London, 49, 51 
 
 Magnifico, II, 233, 244, 246, 250, 251, 255, 256, 259 
 Mantellata, The, 125, 138
 
 Index 303 
 
 Mary Stuart, 3, 4, y, 11, 13-15 
 
 Tudor of England, 32, 33, 35, 38-40, 42, 45 
 
 Matthews, Charles, 55 
 
 Mazzini, 73 
 
 Medici, Coat-of-Arms of the, 242 
 
 Cosimo de', 243, 244 
 
 Giuliano, 237-239, 257 
 
 Lorenzo de', 237-239, 242-24S, 250, 254-259 
 
 The, 151, 222, 237, 239-242, 247, 251 
 
 Mercato Vecchio, 154, 156 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 7^3 
 
 Mirandola, Pico della, 250, 253, 255 
 
 Misericordia, The, 153 
 
 Moore, Charles, O2 
 
 Morello, Monte, 249, 250 
 
 Morton, Earl of, 7 
 
 Murray, Earl of, 7, 8 
 
 Norfolk, Duke of, 34, 39 
 North, Christopher, 55 
 
 Odoacer, 227 
 
 Oliphant, Mrs., 245 
 
 Orseoli (Doge, Pietro), 190-197, 199, 200, 204 
 
 Giovanni, 191, 193-195, 197 
 
 Orso, 191-193, 195-19S, 200-202, 204 
 
 Otto, 191, 192, 194-200, 202 
 
 The, 192, 195, 19O 
 
 Vitale, 19 r, 200 
 
 Palace, Riccardi, 247 
 
 , St. James's, 42 
 
 Palazzo Vecchio, 114, 116, 117, 241,251 
 Pallavese, Padre Guardiano, 223 
 Parr, Katherine, 36, 43 
 Pascarel, 149, 158 
 Pazzi, Francisco, 237-240 
 
 Jacopo, 237, 240 
 
 The, 234, 237, 238, 241, 242, 257 
 
 Pazzo, 233 
 
 Pepoli, Count, 73 
 
 Petrarch, 85, 113 
 
 Philip II. of Spain, 35, 36, 38, 39, 41 
 
 Piazza di Spagna, 165, 176 
 
 Pineta, The, 210, 219, 220, 225, 226
 
 304 Index 
 
 Pisa, 141, 183, 218, 237, 241 
 Pius VII., 213, 215 
 Po, The, 225 
 Pocahontas, 85 
 Politian, 239 
 Pope, Alexander, 55 
 Poppo of Aquileia, 196, 197 
 Portinari, Folco, 86, 87 
 Prison, The Fleet, 49 
 Pulci, 113 
 
 Ravenna, 99, 100, 207, 209-212, 214, 216-218, 221, 222, 
 
 225, 226, 229 
 Remus, 123 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 55 
 Ridolfi, Antonio, 239 
 Rizzio, David, 4-6, 8 
 Rome, 94, 141, 166, 167, 173, 182, 215 
 Romulus, 123 
 Ronco, 225 
 
 Rossetti, William Michael, 171, 180 
 Rue dTsabelle, 279-281 
 Rulhven, Lord, 5, 6 
 
 San Andrea, Church of, 154 
 
 Bartolommeo, Church of, 155 
 
 ■ Dominico, Church of, 129, 131, 135 
 
 Lorenzo, Church of, 151 
 
 Marco, Church and Convent of, 105, no, 254, 255, 257 
 
 Marco, Church of (Venice), 192 
 
 — — Martino, Church of, 91, 95, 256 
 
 Trinita del Monte, 165 
 
 Santa Croce, Church of, 221 
 
 Fosca, Church of, 187 
 
 Reparata, Church of, 233 
 
 Santi Antonio, 223, 224 
 
 Savonarola, Girolamo, 108, no, 112, 114, 116, 118, 119, 234, 
 
 253-256, 258, 259 
 Senio, 123 
 
 Severn, Joseph, 166-170, 175-177, 180-182 
 Seymour, Jane, 32, 43 
 Shakespeare, 22, 43, 54 
 
 house, 19 
 
 Shelley, 181-183 
 
 Siena, 123, 124, 126, 130-132, 135, 138, 144
 
 Index 305 
 
 Sixtus v., 237 
 
 Snowe, Lucy, 282-289, 291-293, 295, 296 
 
 Soderini, Family of the, 141 
 
 vSouter Johnny, 26 
 
 Spezzia, 182 
 
 Steps, The Spanish, 165 
 
 Sterling, Anthony, 73 
 
 John, 73 
 
 St, Peter's Church, 165 
 Stratford-on-Avon, 19 
 " Supping-Room," The little, 3 
 Symouds, John Addington, 221 
 
 Tait, Robert, 72 
 
 Tarn O'Shanter, 26 
 
 Temple Churchyard, 49 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 40, 55, 67 
 
 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 55 
 
 Thackery, Major-General, 13 
 
 Thames, The, 35 
 
 Theatre, Blackfriars, 55 
 
 Tinnock, Nance, 26 
 
 Torcello, 187, 188, 192, 193, 199, 202-204 
 
 Tower of London, 44 
 
 Trelawney, 182 
 
 Uffizi statue, 244 
 Unwin, Mrs., 85 
 Urban VL, 126, 144 
 
 Venice, 189, 190-193, 197-201, 203, 225 
 
 Via Cclzaioli, 155 
 
 Via del Campanile, 150, 157 
 
 Via deila Mo7-ie, 150, 157, 159, i6i 
 
 Villari, 244, 253, 254, 258 
 
 Villette, 279, 280, 282-284, 293-295 
 
 Voltaire, 55 
 
 Wakefield, ]'icarof,i,q 
 Wolsey, Thomas, 31, 35
 
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