Diary And Notes Of Horace Templeton, Esq. Volume I. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ has no place in the life of Italy. The lady of the house is never seen of a morning; not that the cares of family, the duties of a household, engross her – not that she is busied with advancing the education of her children, or improving her own. No: she is simply en deshabille. That is, to be sure, a courteous expression for a toilet that has cost scarce five minutes to accomplish, and would require more than the indulgence one concedes to the enervation of climate to forgive.

      The master of the family repairs to the café: his whole existence revolves around certain little tables, with lemonade, sorbets, and dominoes; his physical wants are, indeed, few, but his intellectual ones even fewer; he cares little for politics – less for literature; his thoughts have but one theme – intrigue; and his whole conversation is a sort of chronique scandaleuse on the city he lives in.

      There is a tone of seeming good-nature – an easy, mock charity, in the way he treats his neighbours’ backslidings – that have often suggested to strangers favourable impressions as to the kindliness of the people; but this is as great an error as can be: the real explanation of the fact is the levity of national feeling, and the little impression that breaches of morality make upon a society dead to all the higher and better dictates of virtue – such offences being not capital crimes, but mere misdemeanours.

      The dinner-hour occasionally, but not always, assembles the family to a meal that in no respect resembles that in more civilised communities. The periodical return of a certain set of forms – those convenances which inspire, at the same time, regard for others and self-respect – the admixture of courtesy with cordial enjoyment – have no representatives around a board where the party assemble, some dusty and heated, others wrapped up in dressing-gowns – all negligent, inattentive to each other, and weary of themselves – tired of the long, unbroken morning, which no occupation lightens, no care beguiles, no duty elevates. The Siesta follows, evening draws near, and at last the life of Italy dawns – dawns when the sun is setting! It is the hour of the theatre – the Theatre, the sole great passion of the nation, the one rallying point for every grade and class. Thither, now, all repair; and for a brief interval the silent streets of the city bustle with the life and movement of the inhabitants, as, on foot or in carriages, they hasten past.

      The “business of the scène” is the very least among the attractions of a theatre in Italy. The opera-box is the drawing-room, the only one of an Italian lady; it is the club-room of the men. Whist and faro, ombre and piquet, dispute the interest with the prima donna or the danseuse in one box; while in another the fair occupant turns from the ardent devotion of stage-passion to listen to the not less impassioned, but as unreal, protestation of her admirer beside her.

      That the drama, as such, is not the attraction, it is sufficient to say that the same piece is often played forty, fifty, sometimes seventy nights in succession, and yet the boxes lose few, if any, of their occupants. Night after night the same faces reappear, as regularly as the actors; the same groupings are formed, the selfsame smiles go round; and were it not that no trait of ennui is discernible, you would say that levity had met its own punishment in the dreariness of monotony. These boxes seldom pass out of the same family; from generation to generation they descend with the family mansion, and are as much a part of the domestic property of a house as the rooms of the residence. Furnished and lighted up according to the taste and at the discretion of the owner, they present to eyes only habituated to our theatres the strangest variety, and even discordance, of aspect: some, brilliant in wax-light and gorgeous in decoration, glitter with the jewelled dresses of the gay company; others, mysteriously sombre, shew the shadowy outlines of an almost shrouded group, dimly visible in the distance.

      The theatre is the very spirit and essence of life in Italy. To the merchant it is the Bourse; it is the club to the gambler, the café to the lounger, the drawing-room and the boudoir to the lady. But where is the domestic life?

      CHAPTER III

      Another note from Favancourt, asking me to dine and meet Alfred de Vigny, whose “Cinque Mars” I praised so highly. Be it so; I am curious to see a Frenchman who has preferred the high esteem of the best critics of his country, to the noisy popularity such men as Sue and Dumas write for.

      De Vigny is a French Washington Irving, with more genius, higher taste, but not that heartfelt appreciation of tranquil, peaceful life, that the American possesses. As episode, his little’tale, the “Canne de Jonc,” is one of the most affecting I ever read. From the outset you feel that the catastrophe must be sad, yet there is nothing harassing or wearying in the suspense. The cloud of evil, not bigger than a man’s hand at first, spreads gradually till it spans the heavens from east to west, and night falls solemn and dark, but without storm or hurricane.

      I scarcely anticipate that such a writer can be a brilliant converser. The best gauge I have ever found of an authors agreeability, is in the amount of dialogue he throws into his books. Wherever narrative, pure narrative, predominates, and the reflective tone prevails, the author will be, perhaps necessarily, more disposed to silence. But he who writes dialogue well, must be himself a talker. Take Scott, for instance; the very character of his dialogue scenes was the type of his own social powers: a strong and nervous common sense; a high chivalry, that brooked nothing low or mean; a profound veneration for antiquity; an innate sense of the humorous, ran through his manner in the world, as they display themselves in his works.

      See Sheridan, too, he talked the School for Scandal all his life; whereas Goldsmith was a dull man in company. Taking this criterion, Alfred de Vigny will be quiet, reserved, and thoughtful; pointed, perhaps, but not brilliant. Apropos of this talking talent, what has become of it? French causerie, of which one hears so much, was no more to be compared to the racy flow of English table-talk, some forty years back, than a group of artificial flowers is fit to compete with a bouquet of richly scented dew-spangled buds, freshly plucked from the garden.

      Lord Brougham is our best man now, the readiest – a great quality – and, strange as it may sound to those who know him not, the best-natured, with anecdote enough to point a moral, but no storyteller; using his wit as a skilful cook does lemon-juice – to flavour but not to sour the plat.

      Painters and anglers, I have remarked, are always silent, thoughtful men. Of course I would not include under this judgment such as portrait and miniature painters, who are about, as a class, the most tiresome and loquacious twaddlers that our unhappy globe suffers under. Wilkie must have been a real blessing to any man sentenced to sit for his picture: he never asked questions, seldom indeed did he answer them; he had nothing of that vulgar trick of calling up an expression in his sitter; provided the man staid awake, he was able always to catch the traits of feature, and, when he needed it, evoke the prevailing character of the individual’s expression by a chance word or two. Lawrence was really agreeable – so, at least, I have always heard, for he was before my day; but I suspect it was that officious agreeability of the artist, the smartness that lies in wait for a smile or the sparkle of the eye, that he may transmit it to the panel.

      The great miniature painter of our day is really a specimen of a miniature intelligence – the most incessant little driveller of worse than nothings: the small gossip that is swept down the back-stairs of a palace, the flat commonplaces of great people, are his stock-in-trade: the only value of such contributions to history is, that they must be true. None but kings could be so tiresome! I remember once sitting to this gentleman, when only just recovering from an illness, and when possibly I endured his forced and forty-horse power of small talk with less than ordinary patience. He had painted nearly every crowned head in Europe – kings, kaisers, archdukes, and grand-duchesses in every principality, from the boundless tracts of the Czar’s possessions, to those states which emulate the small green turf deposited in a bird’s cage. Dear me! how wearisome it was to hear him recount the ordinary traits that marked the life of great people, as if the greatest Tory of us all ever thought Kings and Queens were anything but men and women!

      I listened, as though in a long distressing СКАЧАТЬ