CHAPTER IX. _Florence

What did Shelley, what does any one, mean by their raptures about Florence? Never, surely, was the epithet of _La Bella_ more misapplied. I can well understand the enthusiasm with which men call Genoa _Il Superbo_. Its mountain background, its deep blue sea, its groves of orange and acacia, the prickly aloe growing wild upon the very shore in all the luxuriance of tropical vegetation, indicative of an almost wasteful extravagance of production; while its amphitheatre of palaces, proudly rising in terraced rows, are gorgeous remembrances of the haughty Republic. But Florence! dark, dirty, and discordant! Palaces, gaol-like and gloomy, stand in streets where wretchedness and misery seem to have chosen their dwelling-place--the types of feudal tyranny side by side with modern destitution. The boasted Arno, too, a shrunk-up, trickling stream, not wide enough to be a river, not clear enough to be a rivulet, winds along between hills hot and sun-scorched, where the brown foliage has no touch of freshness, but stands parched and shrivelled by the hot glare of eternal noon. The white-walled villas glisten in the dazzling heat, not tempered by the slightest shade, but reflecting back the scorching glow from rocks cracked and fissured by the sun!

How disappointing is all this! and how wearisome is the endeavour, from the scattered objects here and there, to make any approach to that Florence one has imagined to himself! To me the abstraction is impossible. I carry about with me, even into the galleries, before the triumphs of Raf-faelle and the wonders of Michael Angelo, the sad discordant scenes through which I have passed. The jarred senses are rendered incapable of properly appreciating and feeling those influences that should diffuse their effect upon the mind; and even the sight of the “Guardia Civica,” strutting in solemn mockery beneath the archways where the proud Medici have trod, are contrasts to suggest rather a sense of sarcasm than of pleasure.

Here and there you do come upon some grand and imposing pile of building, the very stones of which seem laid by giant hands; but even these have the fortress character, the air of strongholds, rather than of princely dwellings, as at Genoa. You see at once how much more defence and safety were the guiding principles, than elegance of design and beauty of proportion. No vestibule, peopled with its marble groups, opens here to the passer-by a glimpse of a noble stair rising in spacious amplitude between walls of marble. No gate of gilded fretwork shews the terraced garden, with the plashing fountains, and the orange-trees bending with their fruit.

Like all continental cities where the English congregate, the inhabitants have a mongrel look, grafting English notions of dress and equipage upon their own, and, like most imitators, only successful in following the worst models. The Cascini, too, exhibits a very motley assemblage of gaudy liveries and, dusky carriages, riding-grooms dressed like footmen, their masters no bad resemblance to the “Jeunes Premiers” of a vaudeville. The men are very inferior in appearance to the Milanese; they are neither as well-built nor well-grown, and rarely have any pretensions to a fashionable exterior. The women are mostly ill-dressed, and, in no instance that I have seen, even well-looking. They have the wearied look, without the seductive languor, of the South; they are pale, but not fair; and their gestures are neither plastic nor graceful. In fact, in all that I have seen here, I am sadly disappointed-all, save the Raffaelle’s! they are above my conception of them.

How much of this lies in myself I dare not stop to inquire; a large share, perhaps, but assuredly not all. This climate should be avoided by those of weak chest. Symptoms of further “breaking-up” crowd upon me each day; and this burning sun and piercing wind make a sad conflict in the debilitated frame. But where to go, where to seek out a quiet spot to linger a few days and die! Rome is in all the agonies of its mock liberty--Naples in open revolt: here, where I am, all rule and government have ceased to exist; the mob have every thing at their mercy: that they have not abused their power, is more owing to their ignorance than their honour. When the Irish rebels carried the town of Ross by storm, they broke into the grocers’ shops to eat sugar! The Florentines having bullied the Duke, are only busied about the new uniforms of their Civic Guard!

Hitherto the reforms have gone no further than in organising this same National Guard, and in thrashing the police authorities wherever found. Now, bad as this police was, it was still the only protection to the public peace. It exists no longer; and Tuscany has made her first step in liberty “_en Américaine_” by adopting “Lynch Law.”

I was about to note down a singular instance of this indignant justice of the people, when the arrival of a letter, in a hand unknown to me, suddenly-routed all my intentions. If I am able to record the circumstance here, calmly and without emotion, it is neither from that philosophy the world teaches, nor from any higher motive--it is merely on the same principle that one would bear with tolerable equanimity the break-down of a carriage when within a few miles of the journey’s end! The fact, then, is simply this, that I, Horace Templeton, whose draughts a few days back might have gone far into the “tens of thousands,” without fear of “dishonour,” am now ruined! When we read this solemn word in the newspapers, we at once look back to the rank and station of him whose ruin is predicated. A Duke is “ruined” when he must sell three packs of hounds, three studs of horses, four of his five or six mansions, part with his yacht at Cowes, and his racers at Newmarket, and retire to the Continent with a beggarly pittance of some fifteen thousand per annum. A Merchant is ruined when, by the sudden convulsions of mercantile affairs, he is removed from the unlimited command of millions to pass his days, at Leamington or Cheltenham, on his wife’s jointure of two thousand a-year.

His clerk is ruined when he drops his pocket-book on his way from the Bank, and loses six hundred pounds belonging to the firm. His is more real ruin, for it implies stoppages, suspicion--mayhap loss of place, and its consequences.

But I have lost every thing! Hamerton and Scott, my bankers, have failed; their liabilities, as the phrase is--meaning thereby what they are liable to be asked for, but cannot satisfy--are enormous. My only landed property is small, and so heavily mortgaged as to be worth nothing. I had only waited for the term of an agreement to redeem the mortgage, and clear off all encumbrances; but the “crash” has anticipated me, and I am now a beggar!

Yes, there is the letter, in all cold and chilling civility, curtly stating that “the unprecedented succession of calamities, by which public credit has been affected, have left the firm no other alternative but that of a short suspension of payment! Sincerely trusting, however, that they will be enabled----” and so forth. These announcements have but one burden--the creditors are to be mulcted, while the debtor continues to hope!

And now for my own share in the misfortune. Is it the momentary access of excitement, or is it some passing rally in my constitution? but I certainly feel better, and in higher spirits, than I have done for many a day. It is long since I indulged in my old habit of castle-building; and yet now, at every instant, some new notion strikes me, and I fancy some new field for active labour and exertion. To the present Ministers I am slightly known--sufficiently to ask for employment, if not in my former career, in some other. Should this fail, I have yet powerful friends to ask for me. Not that I like either of these plans--this playing “_antichambre_” is a sore penance at my time of life. Had I health and strength, I’d emigrate. I really do wonder why men of a certain rank, younger sons especially, do not throw their fortunes into the colonies. Apart from the sense of enterprise, there is an immense gain, in the fact that individual exertion, be it of head or hand, can exercise, free from the trammels of conventional prejudices, which so rule and restrain us at home. If we merely venture to use the pruning-knife in our gardens here, there, we may lay the axe to the root of the oak; and yet, in this commonwealth of labour, the gentleman, if his claim to the title be really well founded, is as certain of maintaining a position of superiority as though he had remained in his own country. The Vernons, the Greys, and the Courtenays, have never ceased to hold a peculiar place among their fellow-citizens of the United States; and so is it observable in our colonies, even where mere wealth was found in the opposite scale.

But let me not longer dwell on these things, nor indulge in speculations which lead to hope! Let me rather reflect on my present position, and calculate calmly by what economy I may be able to linger on, and not exhaust the means, till the lamp of life is ready to be quenched.

I am sure that most men of easy, careless temperament, could live as well on one half of their actual incomes, having all that they require, and never feeling any unusual privation; that the other half is invariably “_mangé_” by one’s servants, by tradespeople, by cases of mock distress, by importunity, and by indolence. I well know how I am blameable upon each of these several counts. Now, for a note to my banker here, to ascertain what sum he holds of mine; and then, like the shipwrecked sailor on his raft, to see how long life may be sustained on half or quarter rations!

So, here is the banker’s letter:--“I have the honour to acknowledge,” and so on. The question at issue is the sum--and here it stands: Three hundred and forty-two pounds, twelve shillings, and fourpence. I really thought I had double the amount; but here I find checks innumerable. I have, no doubt, given to many, now far richer than I am. Be it so. The next point is--How long can a man live on three hundred and forty pounds? One man would say, Three weeks--another, as many months--and another, as many years, perhaps. I am totally ignorant what guidance to follow.

In this difficulty I shall send for Dr. Hennesy--he is the man in repute here--and try, if it may be, to ascertain what length of tether he ascribes to my case. Be it a day, a week, or a month, let me but know it. And now to compose myself, and speak calmly on a theme where the slightest appearance of excitement would create erroneous suspicions against me. If H. be the man of sense I deem him, he will not misconstrue my meaning, even should he guess it.

Gilbert reminds me of what I had quite forgotten--that yesterday I signed an agreement for a villa here: I took it for six months, expecting to live one! It struck me, when driving out on the Bologna road, both for architecture and situation; I saw nothing equal to it--an old summer-palace of the Medici, and afterwards inhabited by the Salviati, whose name it bears.

A princely house in every way is this; but how unsuited to ruined fortunes! I walked about the rooms, now stopping to examine a picture or a carved oak cabinet; now to peep at the wild glens, which here are seen dividing the hills in every direction; and felt how easy it would be to linger on here, where objects of taste and high art blend their influence with dreams of the long past. Now, I must address my mind to the different question--How to be released from my contract?

H. has just been here. How difficult it was to force him into candour! A doctor becomes, by the practice of his art, as much addicted to suspicion as a police agent. Every question, every reply of the patient, must be a “symptom.” This wearies and worries the nervous man, and renders him shy and uncommunicative.

For myself, well opining how my sudden demand, “How long can I live?” might sound, if uttered with abrupt sincerity, I submitted patiently to all the little gossip of the little world of this place,--its envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness--which certainly are prime features in an English colony on the Continent--all, that I might at last establish a character for soundness of mind and calmness of purpose, ere I put my _quore_.

The favourable moment came at last, and I asked in full earnest, but with a manner that shewed no sign of dread,--“Tell me, _Dottore mio_, how long may such a chest as mine endure? I mean, taking every possible care, as I do; neither incurring any hazard nor neglect; and, in fact, fighting the battle bravely to the last?”

He tried at first, by a smile and a jocular manner, to evade the question; but seeing my determination fixed, he looked grave, felt my pulse, percussed my chest, and was silent.

“Well,” said I, after a very long pause, “I await my sentence, but in no mood of hope or fear. Is it a month?--a week?--a day?--nay, surely it can hardly be so near as that? Still silent! Come, this is scarcely fair; I ask simply--”

“That which is perfectly impossible to answer, did I concede that I ought to reply, as categorically as you ask.”

“Were I to tell my reasons, doctor, you might judge more harshly of my intelligence than I should like; besides, you would certainly misinterpret my meaning. Tell me, therefore, in the common course of such changes as my disease involves, can I live a year? You shake your head! Be it so. Six months?--Three, then?--Have I three? The winter, you say, is to be feared. I know it. Well, then, shall I own that my convictions anticipate you at each negative? I feel I have not a month--nay, not half of one--a week will do it, doctor; and now excuse scant ceremony, and leave me.”

Alone--friendless--homeless--ruined, and dying! Sad words to write, each of them; sadder when thus brought in brotherhood together. The world and its pageants are passing fast by me, like the eddies of that stream which flows beneath my window. I catch but one glimpse and they are gone, beneath the dark bridge of Death, to mingle in the vast ocean of Eternity.

How strange to see the whole business of the world going on, the moving multitude, the tumult of active minds and bodies,--at the very moment when the creeping chill of ebbing life tells of days and hours numbered!

I am alone--not one to sit by me to combat thoughts that with the faintest help I could resist, but which unaided are too strong for me. In this window-seat where now I rest, who shall sit this day week? The youth, perhaps, in gushing pride of heart and buoyancy, now entering upon life, ardent and high-souled--or the young bride, gazing on that same river that now I watch, and reading in its circles wreathed smiles of happy promise. Oh, may no memories of him, whose tears fall fast now, haunt the spot and throw their gloom on others!

I am friendless--and yet, which of those I still call friends would I now wish beside me. To drink of the cup of consolation? I must first offer my own of misery--nay, it is better to endure alone!

Homeless am I, too--and this, indeed, I feel bitterly. Old familiar objects, associated with ties of affection, bound up with memories of friends, are meet companions for the twilight hours of life. I long to be back in my own chosen room--the little library, looking out on the avenue of old beeches leading to the lake, and the village spire rising amid the dark yew-trees. There was a spot there, too, I had often fancied--when I close my eyes I think I see it still--a little declivity of the ground beneath a large old elm, where a single tomb stood surrounded by an iron railing; one side was in decay, and through which I often passed to read the simple inscription--“Courtenay Temple-ton, Armiger, aetatis 22.”

This was not the family burying-place--why he was laid there was a family mystery. His death was attributed to suicide, nor was his memory ever totally cleared of the guilt. The event was briefly this:--On the eve of the great battle of Fontenoy he received an insult from an officer of a Scotch regiment, which ended in a duel. The Scotchman fell dead at the first fire. Templeton was immediately arrested; and instead of leading an attack, as he had been appointed to do, spent the hours of the battle in a prison. The next morning he was discovered dead; a great quantity of blood had flowed from his mouth and nose, which, although no external wound was found, suggested an idea of self-destruction. None suspected, what I have often heard since from medical men, that a rupture of the aorta from excessive emotion--a broken heart, in fact--had killed him: a death more frequently occurring than is usually believed.

“Ruined and dying” are the last words in my record; and yet neither desirous of fortune nor life! At least, so faint is my hope that I should use either with higher purpose than I have done, that all wish is extinguished.

Seriously I believe, that love of life is less general than the habit of projecting schemes for the future--a vague system of castle-building, which even the least speculative practises; and that death is thus accounted the great evil, as suddenly interrupting a chain of events whose series is still imperfect. The very humblest peasant that rises to daily toil has his gaze fixed on some future, some period of rest or repose, some hour of freedom from his lifelong struggle. Now, I have exhausted this source; the well, that once bubbled with eddying fancies of days to come, is dry. High spirits, health, and the buoyancy that result from both, when joined to a disposition keenly alive to enjoyment, and yet neither cloyed by excess nor depraved by corrupt tastes, will always go far to simulate a degree of ability. The very freedom a mind thus constituted enjoys is a species of power; and its liberty exaggerates its range, just as the untrammelled paces of the young colt seem infinitely more graceful and noble than the matured regularity of the trained and bitted steed.

It was thus that I set out in life--ardent, hopeful, and enthusiastic: if my mental resources were small, they were always ready at hand, like, a banker with a weak capital, but who could pay every trifling demand on the spot, I lived upon credit; and upon that credit I grew rich. Had I gone on freely as I began, I might still enjoy the fame of wealth and solvency, but with the reputation of affluence came the wish to be rich. I contracted my issues, I husbanded my resources, and from that hour I became suspected. To avoid a “run” for gold, I ceased to trade and retired. This, in a few words, is the whole history of my life.

Gilbert comes to say that the carriage is waiting to convey me to the villa--our luggage is already there. Be it so: still I must own to myself, that going to occupy a palace for the last few hours of life and fortune is very much like good Christopher Sly’s dream of Lordliness.