Part 5

The road from Vintimille to Genoa is a branch, and the ticket had to be signed and trains changed again at Genoa, and we also wanted to get a sleeping-car on to Rome. We had twenty-seven minutes at the station in Genoa, which is bigger than the Union Depot at Kansas City. Again I threw the grips out of the window and followed the porter. Then I left Mrs. Morgan with the baggage while the porter led me a merry chase around the block to the office where the ticket was to be signed or “viséd.” It was 11 o’clock at night, and you can imagine how it felt to be guided around among those Italians wondering all the while if the porter knew what I wanted. But he did and I returned in safety, and then I tried to find out about the sleeping-car. In French this is called a “Litts-salon,” and in German a “Schlaf-wagen,” literally a sleep-wagon. I tried English, French and German, but finally found the sleeper by examining the train,—next to the engine, of course, just where I wasn’t expecting it. We got on board safely, and after distributing a lot more Italian coppers I found we had transacted the business and had five minutes to spare,—as good time as I could have made in America to do all those things. All I then had to do was to hand out the required sleeper fare, $7.50 to Rome, 300 miles, three times what Mr. Pullman would have charged. But I reserve my comments on European sleeping-cars until I get a little more experience for a letter on railroads in the Old World.

And this is an old world. When I was in Boston I looked with awe upon the churches and monuments of 1776. In England these years seemed recent, and it took a cathedral or a castle of Elizabeth’s time or back to William the Conqueror. But here in Rome the very latest and newest buildings that we look at are those of the early Christians, and to get a real thrill they have to show me something B. C. It is really a good deal like living back in those times. I can’t read the newspapers and don’t know what has happened since I left Paris nearly a week ago. At that time the Russians and Japs were either going to have a conference or a fight, or both. Sometimes I wonder what has occurred, but generally I am concerning myself with what Julius Cæsar did, standing by the old forum and imagining Mark Antony denouncing the boss-busters, or wondering if Cicero’s speech against Catiline was not a political blunder which would make the old man trouble at the next city election. The only difficulty is to make the modern Italians fit in with the old Romans. Somehow or other it is hard to imagine the lazy gents who hold out their hands for coppers as real Romans who ruled the world.

The first real striking feature of Italy we noticed at Vintimille was the policemen. They wear handsome full-dress uniforms with red braid down the trousers, gilt lace and epaulets on the coats, tri-cornered hat with an immense plume, and carry in sight a sword and revolver. An Italian policeman walking his beat makes a gorgeous Knight Templar uniform look cheap. You never see one policeman—there are always two together. The police of the whole country are appointed by the royal government, not by local officials, and are selected from the army. They are good-looking fellows, and wear their tight, heavy coats buttoned up in front regardless of the fact that it is Italy and the climate is not better than Kansas the last of June. One of the troubles with Italy is that it is really a second-class power, but it tries to keep up an army and navy in rivalry with Germany, Russia, and France. Every Italian must put in three years in active service. Take a country about the size of Kansas, fill it up with an army of 300,000 men and you see soldiers in every direction. Immense cathedrals and palaces filled with valuable gems and works of art, an army of expensive uniforms, and a poverty-stricken people,—that is Italy. The tourist hurries along and shuts his eyes to the distress as much as he can, visits the galleries and the churches, the ruins and the historic spots. He tries to see only the Italy of 2,000 years ago. He is fortunate if he can keep himself worked up in an ecstasy over the Cæsars and the old masters, so that the half-clothed children, the broken-down women and the men working without hope, do not leave an impression on his heart. I can’t shut my eyes tight enough to avoid seeing those things and sympathizing with the poor Italian people who have no show.

But here we are in Italy, not the Italy of to-day, but the Italy of Cæsar and Cicero, Nero and Constantine, the Italy where Paul and Peter planted the Christian religion and where they died the death of martyrs; the Italy of temples and colosseums, cathedrals and catacombs,—the Italy we read about, if you please, and not the Italy now on the map.

ROME AND ROMANS.

ROME, June 29, 1905.

There is so much in the point of view. Here are things which I have studied about, read about, wondered about. Some of them on close inspection are impressive yet. Others are commonplace. And there are even some which are ridiculous. On approaching Rome I had tried to take an inventory of the things I most wanted to see first: The Forum, St. Peter’s, the Appian Way, the Coliseum, the Sistine Chapel, the Tarpeian Rock, the Vatican, and the list was as long as I could set down. But really the words that kept haunting me and which were always in my mind were “the yellow Tiber.” Like every other school-boy of my time, I had learned and recited “Horatius at the Bridge,” and I wanted to see the raging torrent which saved Rome when Horatius held back the foe until the Romans had cut down the only bridge. I kept saying to myself:

“Then up spake brave Horatius, The captain of the gate: ‘To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late; And how can man die better Than when facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers And the temples of his gods?’”

Accordingly the first observation I made in Rome was of the Tiber. It is yellow, all right, and about as wide as the Cottonwood river. It seemed impossible to associate that stream with the Tiber of which historians had told and poets sung. But it was the Tiber, all right—from another view-point.

Now with St. Peter’s it was different. I have seen some right nice churches in America, but of course they do not come up to European cathedrals. St. Paul’s in London was disappointing, and Notre Dame in Paris was not up to the advance advertising. But when it comes to impressiveness St. Peter’s at Rome is to my mind the greatest imaginable. It is so big and yet so proportioned, so grand and yet so substantial, so full of precious memories of martyrs and divines and so tastefully and magnificently decorated with pictures that tell the story of the faith it stands for. All the people in Hutchinson could worship in one side of St. Peter’s, and yet there is none of that barny, barracksy look which usually goes with great size and capacity. The length is 232 yards, the transept is 150 yards and the height of the nave 151 feet, the dome is 435 feet to the cross. But figures don’t tell anything about St. Peter’s. The interior is tapestry and painting, gold without tinsel, pictures without tawdry effect, and columns that add and do not detract from the dignity of the structure. Under the great dome is the tomb of Peter, the disciple who made so much trouble, but knowing his energy and power, whom Christ made the rock upon which the church was to be built.

Next door to St. Peter’s is the Vatican, where the pope resides, and the first thing we saw there was the Sistine Chapel. Here is where my view-point differs from most people. I concede that the paintings in the Sistine Chapel are beautiful, especially in their design and their color. The old masters who did the work under the direction of Michael Angelo have never been equaled in their ability to make rich color. But I contend that the subject of a picture should count as well as the drawing and the color. When Michael Angelo attempted to paint God Almighty he couldn’t do it. The color is all right and the proportions are perfect, but all that Michael Angelo did was to paint a man a little larger than Adam, and that does not come up to my ideal of the Divine. The fact is that neither Michael Angelo nor anyone else can put onto canvas such a subject, and therefore Michael should not have tried it. His fault was in his judgment of what can be painted. The entire effect of the remainder of the beautiful ceilings and walls with their paintings of scenes from Old and New Testament, was spoiled for me when I couldn’t get away from that central figure, that failure of ability to do the impossible.

I would like to have the support of the women-folks in my theory in regard to the failure of the Sistine Chapel, so I will add that in the picture where Michael paints the devil, he makes the devil half snake and the upper half a woman. If I remember correctly, the great painter was an old bachelor,—probably not one of his own motion.

The paintings mix up the pagan with the Christian. “The Last Judgment” has Christ the central figure as judge, surrounded by apostles and saints, and the hell part of the painting is according to Dante, with the old Roman idea of the boatman Charon ferrying the lost across the river. In this picture Michael Angelo made a hit. He put the face of an enemy of his, an officer of the pope, on the painting of Minos, one of the leading devils of hell. The offending official had objected to some of the artist’s work on account of the nudity of the figures, and Michael has sent him down the ages as the face of a devil.

But there is no call for me to describe paintings and statuary and cathedrals. A hasty sketch like this is not giving them fair treatment. You can’t go anywhere in Rome without running into something beautiful or something historic. Go down a street and there will be the baths of Diocletian, turn around and there will be the Forum, and next is the Coliseum, the Arch of Constantine, Trajan’s forum and column, the Palace of Tiberius, the Stadium, and so on until you can’t rest with the long list of things you saw and ought to remember, and some that you ought to have seen but didn’t because you were just too tired to look around. The Forum, the Coliseum and all this kind of things look just like the pictures, and they are there,—that’s all I can say about them, although the feeling of actually having seen and touched is one of a great deal of satisfaction and worth going to Rome to have.

I don’t know how many churches there are in Rome. There are eighty dedicated to the Virgin and fully as many to St. Peter. They are filled with great paintings and statuary. Rome is the center of the greatest Christian church, and for centuries the civilized world, or a large part of it, has sent its gifts to the temples and shrines. Thousands and tens of thousands of young men are studying here for the priesthood. The streets are filled with their black gowns and hats. Here and there along the streets and roads are shrines erected to patron saints. All the churches are open seven days in the week, and there are always people in them at their devotions.

As a contrast to the power and greatness of the present church we went to see the catacombs, the burrows in the earth to which the Christians of the early centuries fled for safety, and in which they buried their dead. The catacombs of St. Calixtus, which we visited are said to contain twelve miles of underground passages. Along the sides and in the occasional niches and chapels are the places where the bodies were put. The passages go down thirty to forty feet and the catacombs are from four to six stories downward, just as a building is that much above ground. In these places the early Christians kept alive their faith under the terrible persecution of the emperors. Amid the tombs they met and worshipped in spite of imperial decree and certain death if captured. Rude pictures and inscriptions on the walls tell part of the story which has made the world wonder ever since as the Roman government did then, at the power of the faith for which men and women would so live and so die.

Coming out of the catacombs we drove along the Appian Way, the great military road constructed over 300 years B. C. I had expected to have a good thrill of enthusiasm over the Appian Way, but somehow it did not come. The Appian Way is an ordinary good country road lined with old houses, wine gardens, ruins and high fences. There are still a number of villas and palaces, but the owners are poor and the basements are usually rented out for stables and the upper apartments for tenements. Italian noblemen are generally poor, and if they have palaces are obliged to rent rooms and keep boarders.

Another cherished hope of mine is gone. I had read about the beautiful Italian peasant girls and have seen them on the stage singing in opera and dressed in fetching short skirts and bright-colored bodices. Italian girls work in the fields with the boys and then help their mothers with the children, and most of them look tired and sickly. The fetching skirts hang like loose wall-paper and the “bright bodice” looks as if the girl was wearing her mother’s old corset outside her clothes.

The largest and most numerous ruins in Rome are those of the public baths erected by the state and by the emperors. The Romans in those days were sporty, banqueted all night and bathed all next day to get over the effects. But there are no public baths now—at least none of consequence. And judging by the ordinary senses of sight and smell, bathing has become one of the lost arts with a large number of the Romans of to-day.

VENICE, THE BEAUTIFUL.

VENICE, July 3, 1905.

I suppose everybody knows about Venice, the city built in the water. During the sixth century the “barbarians” from the north were overrunning Italy, killing or making slaves of the people and destroying the cities and towns. A number of the inhabitants of northeast Italy fled for safety to a group of small islands in the shallow bay of the Adriatic sea, and there built up little villages which were united in a republic and became the city and suburbs which we call Venice. They naturally were a seafaring and trading people, and Venice was the port of commerce between the Orient and Europe. The Crusades stimulated business, and Venice was the most important trading-point on the Mediterranean. At that time there was no Suez canal and no knowledge of an ocean route to Asia, and all commerce passed through Venice. The little republic grew strong and powerful, captured and retained possessions in Italy and the islands of the Mediterranean. Venice was one of the powers of Europe about the fifteenth century, and thought she had the world by the tail. But the Turks captured Constantinople, other routes to Asia were discovered about the time Columbus reached America, and Venice as a great political power and business center suffered a collapse. In other words, the boom in Venice busted and Venice has never done much on her own account since. The first few hundred years the government was that of a republic, but about the close of the thirteenth century the nobles who had won leadership through trade and war declared their offices hereditary, and thereafter Venice was an aristocracy with a president called “the doge.” During the French Revolution the French captured Venice, and then Austria got it, and finally, in 1868, it was united with the kingdom of Italy, where it belongs.

Built on islands, crossed by canals like streets in other cities, without a carriage or a horse, Venice is a strange, and to me, an attractive place. The railroad runs out on a long trestle bridge. It is hardly appropriate to say “landed” in a place like Venice, but we arrived here at ten o’clock at night. The porter for the hotel to which we were going took us through the station and put us into a gondola, and away we went, down back streets and under bridges, with no light except a few corner lamps and the stars. The Venetian gondoliers may be poetical, but their looks do not invite the confidence of the traveler when he intrusts himself to their hands for the first time and late at night. Little chills creep up and down your back as you see the gondola going straight for a corner—sure to hit it, but accidentally doesn’t. After you get acquainted with the ways of the city you learn to trust the gondolier, but the first time, late at night, you have your doubts. You may forget just how you arrived in other cities, but not in Venice.

The Grand canal, the main street in Venice, is about seventy-five yards wide and averages sixteen feet deep. The paving question does not bother the city council in Venice. Most of their canal streets are only twelve to thirty feet in width. There are also a few real streets four to ten feet wide, on the inside of the blocks formed by the canals, and the total result is a labyrinth of alleys and canals which are impossible for a stranger to get head or tail of. Along the Grand canal and many others the fine houses of the old prosperous times loom up straight from the water six or seven stories. For example, the front of our hotel, on the Grand canal, has absolutely no sidewalk, only marble steps leading to the water, up which the tide rises about two and a half feet twice a day. The architecture of Venice is Oriental, and is refreshing after the Roman and Greek styles everywhere else in Italy. The churches and public buildings, mostly constructed between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, have round Moorish towers and are decorated with gold and colors and have very ornate pillars and façades. That makes Venice a beautiful city, and so it is,—if you don’t go into the little back alleys where you see the undecorated side. Of the 125,000 people one-fourth have no means of support except charity. In the last few years Venice has revived the glass industry and has developed the lace-making, and times are better than they were. But just think of a people where one-fourth have no chance to earn their living! We visited one of the big lace-making suburbs on the island of Burano. The lace, which Mrs. Morgan says is “b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l” and over which all good women rave, is made by girls and women who sit all day on straight-back chairs and labor over the pillow,—and get about twenty-five cents a day wages. We visited the glass-blowers at Murano, the finest in the world, and skilled workmen get up to two dollars a day for a dexterity and ability which would easily command three or four times that amount in America. The people live mostly on fish and vegetables, are very poor and apparently very happy. They are the best-looking folks I have seen in Italy, and evidently enjoy the improvident life which would drive an American to strong drink, or if he were in Italy would drive him to drink the water.

The center of Venice is “the Piazza of St. Mark,” a square about two hundred yards long and nearly half as wide, paved with marble and inclosed by fine buildings, including the great Church of St. Mark, the old palace of the doge, the present royal palace, and a glittering array of shops. I should say there were ten thousand beautiful shops in Venice selling lace, glass, art works, beads, curios, pictures, etc. Of course there are not that many, but there seem to be. There is practically nothing else of importance. Venice is a good deal like the world’s fair grounds, all glitter and glass, Oriental towers and marble palaces, beautiful bridges and lagoons, and everybody trying to separate the stranger from his money.

Venice is a night town. In the evening the canals are filled with gondolas and everybody is out for a good time. Regular musical clubs drift along with the sweetest Italian opera rendered with real ability, and arias and Italian serenades and love songs until you think the world is nothing but lights glancing on the water, drifting gondolas, song and gladness. Every few minutes one of the singers will pass the hat and you contribute two or three cents and remember you are still on earth. We sit at our hotel and watch the gay crowd in the passing gondolas, or for a few cents get into one, lean back on the easy cushions, smoke a two-cent cigar, and forget all about these poor people with their poverty and their fleas. They have forgotten them themselves.

The patron saint of Venice is St. Mark. In the early days, say a thousand years ago and more, some doge dreamed that Venice would never prosper until the bones of St. Mark were brought here for burial. The bones happened to be in Asia or Africa, and for years the Venetians put in their time fighting the Turks and trying to capture the relics. Finally the bright idea struck them that it would be easier to steal St. Mark’s bones than capture them by battle, and an enterprising Venetian merchant did the job. The remains of St. Mark were brought to Venice and a beautiful cathedral with Oriental towers and rich colors built above them. The doge’s dream was no fake, for after that Venice prospered greatly. Tradition says that St. Mark used to have a winged lion for a companion, and accordingly the winged lion is the Venetian emblem. The cathedral and the public buildings are full of Oriental works of art captured or stolen from the Turks during the years of the Crusades when Venice was a stronghold of Christendom. Venetian painters have done St. Mark and the lion in every conceivable place, and wherever you go you see his kindly face, the quill pen he used in writing, and the playful winged lion. The only horses in the city are of bronze, and decorate the façade of St. Mark’s cathedral. Except for these rather poor imitations I suppose nine-tenths of the people of Venice never saw a horse. Incidentally I will add that it is a great advantage to live in a city where you are not awakened at daylight by the rumble of wagons and carts over stone-paved streets.

The government of Venice during the Middle Ages was something fierce. Nominally a republic, it was controlled by the nobles, who had a general assembly, which selected a senate of seventy-five, of which there was an inner council of ten and a secret tribunal of three, who met masked and did not know each other’s identity. If you lived in Venice at that time and had an enemy you wanted to do away with, you would drop a letter accusing him of treason into the letter-box shaped like a lion’s head in the counter outside the room of the council of three. It was a pretty sure thing that he would not be heard from again. Of course you would have to do this first, for your enemy might be dropping in a letter while you were thinking about it.

We went through the rooms of the various councils down the secret stairway and over the “Bridge of Sighs,” which connected the palace with the prison across the canal street. This was the way the prisoners were brought for trial, and if they went back it was to torture and death. The jails in those times were not built for health or sanitary purposes, and were evidently not examined by the county commissioners. The dungeons are dark and damp, and the guide tells you some awful stories of the rack, the thumbscrew and the block. You can imagine the “good old days” and shudder as you think of the cruelty and the crime. Paraphrasing Byron, who wrote some lines on the subject:

I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, Visions of Old from those deep dungeons rise,— The shrieks of pain, the terrifying cries, Then I reflect: Perhaps it’s mostly lies.

SOME THINGS ON ART.

VENICE, ITALY, July 3, 1905.