Chapter 9

It is their holiday as it is ours, but what is a mere refreshment to us is life to them. What a rapture of freedom looks up at us out of the little faces that watch us as we thread our way from group to group! The mere change of dress is a revolution in the child's existence. These brown-holland frocks, rough sunshades, and sandboots, these clothes that they may wet and dirty and tear as they like, mean deliverance from endless dressings--dressings for breakfast and dressings for lunch, dressings to go out with mamma and dressings to come down to dessert--an escape from fashionable little shoes and tight little hats and stiff little flounces that it is treason to rumple. There is an inexpressible triumph in their return at eventide from the congress by the sea, dishevelled, bedraggled, but with no fear of a scolding from nurse. Then too there is the freedom from "lessons." There are no more of those dreadful maps along the wall, no French exercises, no terrible arithmetic. The elder girls make a faint show of keeping up their practising, but the goody books which the governess packed carefully at the bottom of their boxes remain at the bottom unopened. There is no time for books, the grave little faces protest to you; there is only time for the sea. That is why they hurry over breakfast to get early to the sands, and are moody and restless at the length of luncheon. It is a hopeless business to keep them at home; they yawn over picture-books, they quarrel over croquet, they fall asleep over draughts. Home is just now only an interlude of sleeping or dining in the serious business of the day.

The one interest of existence is in the sea. Its novelty, its vastness, its life, dwarf everything else in the little minds beside it. There is the endless watching for the ships, the first peep at the little dot on the horizon, the controversies as it rises about its masts or its flag, the questions as to where it is coming from and where it is going to. There is the endless speculation on the tide, the doubt every morning whether it is coming in or going out, the wonder of its perpetual advance or retreat, the whispered tales of children hemmed in between it and the cliffs, the sense of a mysterious life, the sense of a mysterious danger. Above all there is the sense of a mysterious power. The children wake as the wind howls in the night, or the rain dashes against the window panes, to tell each other how the waves are leaping high over the pier and ships tearing to pieces on reefs far away. So charming and yet so terrible, the most playful of playfellows, the most awful of possible destroyers, the child's first consciousness of the greatness and mystery of the world around him is embodied in the sea.

It is amusing to see the precision with which the children's congress breaks up into its various sections. The most popular and important is that of the engineers. The little members come toddling down from the cliffs with a load of implements, shouldering rake and spade, and dangling tiny buckets from their arms. One little group makes straight for its sand-hole of yesterday, and is soon busy with huge heaps and mounds which are to take the form of a castle. A crowing little urchin beside is already waving the Union Jack which is ready to crown the edifice, if the Fates ever suffer it to be crowned. Engineers of less military taste are busy near the water's edge with an elaborate system of reservoirs and canals, and greeting with shouts of triumph the admission of the water to miniature little harbours. A corps of absolutely unscientific labourers are simply engaged in digging the deepest hole they can, and the blue nets over their sunshades are alone visible above the edge of the excavation. It is delightful to watch the industry, the energy, the absolute seriousness and conviction of the engineers. Sentries warn you off from the limits of the fortress; you are politely asked to "please take care," as your clumsy foot strays along the delicate brink of the canal. Suggestions that have a mechanical turn about them, hints on the best way of reaching the water or the possibility of a steeper slope for the sand-walls, are listened to with attention and respect. You are rewarded by an invitation which allows you to witness the very moment when the dyke is broken and the sea admitted into basin and canal, or the yet more ecstatic moment when the Union Jack waves over the completed castle.

Indolence and adventure charm the dabblers, as industry absorbs the engineers. The sands are of all earthly spots the most delightful; but a greater delight than any earthly spot can afford awaits the dabbler in the sea. It is mostly the girls who dabble; the gaiety and frolic suit them better than the serious industry of castles and canals. Deliverance from shoes and stockings, the first thrill of pleasure and surprise at the cool touch of the water, the wild rush along the brim, the dainty advance till the sea covers the little ankles, the tremulous waiting with an air of defiance as the wave deepens round till it touches the knee, the firm line with which the dabblers grasp hand in hand and face the advancing tide, the sudden panic, the break, the disorderly flight, the tears and laughter, the run after the wave as it retreats again, the fresh advance and defiance--this is the paradise of the dabbler. Hour after hour, with clothes tucked round their waist and a lavish display of stout little legs, the urchins wage their mimic warfare with the sea. Meanwhile the scientific section is encamped upon the rocks. With torn vestments and bruised feet the votaries of knowledge are peeping into every little pool, detecting mussel-shells, picking up seaweed, hunting for anemones. A shout of triumph from the tiny adventurer who has climbed over the rough rock-shelf announces that he has secured a prize for the glass jar at home, where the lumps of formless jelly burst into rosy flowers with delicate tendrils waving gently round them for food. A cry of woe tells of some infantile Whymper who has lost his hold on an Alpine rock-edge some six inches high. Knowledge has its difficulties as well as its dangers, and the difficulty of forming a rock-section in the face of the stern opposition of mothers and nurses is undoubtedly great. Still, formed it is, and science furnishes a goodly company of votaries and martyrs to the congress by the sea.

But of course the naval section bears away the palm. It is for the most part composed of the elder boys and of a few girls who would be boys if they could. Its members all possess a hopeless passion for the sea, and besiege their mothers for promises that their future life shall be that of middies. They wear straw hats and loose blue shirts, and affect as much of the sailor in their costume as they can. Each has a boat, or as they call it a "vessel," and the build and rig of these vessels is a subject of constant discussion and rivalry in the section. Much critical inquiry is directed to the propriety of Arthur's jib, or the necessity of "ballasting" or pouring a little molten lead into Edward's keel. The launch of a new vessel is the event of the week. The coast-guardsman is brought in to settle knotty questions of naval architecture and equipment, and the little seamen listen to his verdicts, his yarns, the records of his voyages, with a wondering reverence. They ask knowingly about the wind and the prospects of the weather; they submit to his higher knowledge their theories as to the nature and destination of each vessel that passes; they come home with a store of naval phrases which are poured recklessly out over the tea-table. The pier is a favourite haunt of the naval section. They delight in sitting on rough coils of old rope. Nothing that is of the sea comes amiss to them. "I like the smell of tar," shouts a little enthusiast. They tell tales among themselves of the life of a middie and the fun of the "fo-castle," and watch the waves leaping up over the pier-head with a wild longing to sing 'Rule Britannia.' Every ship in the offing is a living thing to them, and the appearance of a man-of-war sends them sleepless to bed.

There is but one general meeting of the children's congress, and that is in front of the bathing-machines. Rows of little faces wait for their turn, watching the dash of the waves beneath the wheels, peeping at the black-robed figures who are bobbing up and down in the sea, half longing for their dip, half shrinking as the inevitable moment comes nearer and nearer, dashing forward joyously at last as the door opens and the bathing woman's "Now, my dear," summons them to the quaint little box. One lingers over the sight as one lingers over a bed of flowers. There is all the fragrance, the colour, the sweet caprice, the wilfulness, the delight of childhood in the tiny figures that meet us on the return from their bath, with dancing eyes and flushed cheeks and hair streaming over their shoulders. What a hero the group finds in the urchin who never cries! With what envy they regard the big sister who never wants to come out of the water! It is pleasant to listen to their prattle as they stroll over the sands with a fresh life running through every vein, to hear their confession of fright at the first dip, their dislike of putting their head under water, their chaff of the delicate little sister who "will only bathe with mamma." Mammas are always good-humoured by the sea; papas come out of their eternal newspaper and toss the wee brats on their shoulders, uncles drop down on the merry little group with fresh presents every day. The restraint, the distance of home vanishes with the practical abolition of the nursery and the schoolroom. Home, schoolroom, nursery, all are crammed together in the little cockleshell of a boat where the little ones are packed round father and mother and tossing gaily over the waves. What endless fun in the rising and falling, the creaking of the sail, the gruff voice of the boatman, the sight of the distant cliffs, the flock of sea-gulls nestling in the wave-hollows! The little ones trail their hands in the cool water and fancy they see mermaids in the cool green depths. The big boy watches the boatman and studies navigation. The little brother dips a hook now and then in a fond hope of whiting. The tide has come in ere they return, and the little voyagers are lifted out, tired and sleepy, in the boatman's arms, to dream that night of endless sailings over endless seas.

It is a terrible morning that brings the children news of their recall to the smoke and din of town. They wander for a last visit down to the beach, listen for the last time to the young bandit in his Spanish sombrero who charms the nursery-maids with lays of love, club their pence for a last interview with the itinerant photographer. It is all over; the sands are thinner now, group after group is breaking up, autumn is dying into winter, and rougher winds are blowing over the sea. But the sea is never too rough for the little ones. With hair blown wildly about their faces they linger disconsolately along the brink, count the boats they shall never see again, make pilgrimages to the rock caves to tell its separate story of enjoyment in each of them, and fling themselves with a last kiss on the dear, dear sands! Then they shoulder their spade and rake, and with one fond look at the cliffs turn their backs on the sea. But the sea is with them still, even when the crowded train has whirled them far from waves that the white gull skims over. They have their tales of it to tell to their governess, their memories of it to count over before they fall asleep, their dreams of it as they lie asleep, their hopes of seeing it again when weary winter and spring and summer have at last slipped away. They listen to stories of wrecks, and find a halfpenny for the sham sailor who trolls his ballads in the street. Now and then they look lovingly at the ships and the sand-buckets piled away in the play-cupboard. So with one abiding thought at their little hearts the long days glide away till autumn finds them again children by the sea.

THE FLORENCE OF DANTE.

The one story in the history of the modern world which rivals in concentrated interest the story of Athens is the story of Florence in the years just before and after the opening of the fourteenth century--the few years, that is, of its highest glory in freedom, in letters, in art. Never since the days of Pericles had such a varied outburst of human energy been summed up in so short a space. Architecture reared the noble monuments of the Duomo and Santa Croce. Cimabue revolutionized painting, and then "the cry was Giotto's." Italian poetry, preluded by the canzonets of Guido Cavalcanti and his rivals, rose to its fullest grandeur in the 'Commedia' of Dante. Italian prose was born in the works of Malaspina and Dino. Within, the Florentines worked out patiently and bravely amidst a thousand obstacles the problem of free and popular government. Without, they covered sea and land with their commerce; their agents supplied the Papal treasury, while private firms were already beginning that career of vast foreign loans which at a later time enabled the victor of Crécy to equip his armies with Florentine gold.

We can only realize the attitude of Florence at this moment by its contrast with the rest of Europe. It was a time when Germany was sinking down into feudal chaos under the earlier Hapsburgs. The system of despotic centralization invented by St. Louis and perfected by Philippe le Bel was crushing freedom and vigour out of France. If Parliamentary life was opening in England, literature was dead, and a feudalism which had become embittered by the new forms of law which the legal spirit of the age gave it was pressing harder and harder on the peasantry. Even in Italy Florence stood alone. The South lay crushed beneath the oppression of its French conquerors. In the North the earlier communal freedom had already made way for the rule of tyrants when it was just springing into life in the city by the Arno. For it is noteworthy that of all the cities of Italy Florence is the most modern. Genoa and Pisa had been rivals in commercial activity a hundred years before the merchants of Florence were known out of Tuscany. Sicily had caught the gift of song from the Provençal troubadours half a century before the Florentine singers. Too insignificant to share in the great struggle of the Empire and the Papacy, among the last to be divided into Guelph and Ghibelline, Florence emerged into communal greatness when that of Milan or Bologna was already in decay.

The City of the Lily came late to the front to inherit and give fresh vigour to the gifts of all. As the effigies of Byzantine art became living men and women beneath the pencil of Giotto, so the mere imitative poetry of the Sicilian Court became Italian literature in Dante and Boccaccio. Freedom, slow as it seemed in awakening, nowhere awakened so grandly, nowhere fought so long and stubbornly for life. Dino Compagni sets us face to face with this awakening, with this patient pitiful struggle. His 'Chronicle' indeed has been roughly attacked of late by the sweeping scepticism of German critics, but the attack has proved an unsuccessful one. The strongest evidence of its genuineness indeed lies in the impression of a distinct personality which is left on us by a simple perusal of the 'Chronicle' itself. Some of its charm no doubt rises from the naïve simplicity of Dino's story-telling. With him and with his contemporaries, Malaspina, Dante, and Villani, Italian prose begins; and we can hardly fancy a better training in style for any young Italian than to be brought face to face in Dino with the nervous picturesque accents that marked the birth of his mother-tongue. But the charm is more one of character than one of style. Throughout we feel the man, a man whose temper is so strongly and clearly marked in its contrast with so reflective a temper as Villani's that the German theory which makes his chronicle a mere cento from the later work hardly needs discussion. Dino has the quaint directness, the dramatic force, the tenderness of Froissart, but it is a nobler and more human tenderness; a pity not for the knight only, but for knight and burgher as well. The sham tinsel of chivalry which flutters over the pages of the gay Canon of Liège is exchanged in Dino for a manly patriotism, a love of civic freedom, of justice, of religion. In his quiet way he is a great artist. There is an Herodotean picturesqueness as well as an Herodotean simplicity in such a picture as that of Dante's first battle-field, the Florentine victory of Campaldino:--

"On the appointed day the men of Florence advanced their standards to go into the enemies' land, and passed by Casentino along an ill road where, had the enemy found them, they had received no little damage; but such was not the will of God. And they came near to Bibbiena, at a place called Campaldino where was the enemy, and there they halted in array of battle. The captains of war sent the light-armed foot to the front; and each man's shield, with a red lily on a white ground, was stretched out well before him. Then the Bishop, who was short-sighted, asked, 'Those there: what walls be they?' They answered him, 'The shields of the enemy.' Messer Barone de' Mangiadori da San Miniato, a chevalier frank and well skilled in deeds of arms, gathered his men-at-arms together and said to them, 'My masters, in Tuscan wars men were wont to conquer by making a stout onset, and that lasted but a while, and few men died, for it was not in use to kill. Now is the fashion changed, and men conquer by holding their ground stoutly, wherefore I counsel you that ye stand firm and let them assault you.' And so they settled to do. The men of Arezzo made their onset with such vigour and so great force that the body of the Florentines fell back not a little. The fight was hard and keen. Messer Corso Donati with a brigade of the men of Pistoja charged the enemy in flank; the quarrels from the crossbows poured down like rain; the men of Arezzo had few of them, and were withal charged in flank where they were exposed; the air was covered with clouds, and there was a very great dust. Then the footmen of Arezzo set themselves to creep under the bellies of the horses, knife in hand, and disembowelled them, and some of them penetrated so far that in the very midst of the battalion were many dead of either part. Many that were counted of great prowess were shown vile that day, and many of whom none spoke word won honour.... The men of Arezzo were broken, not by cowardice or little prowess, but by the greater number of their enemies were they put to the rout and slain. The soldiers of Florence that were used to fighting slew them; the villeins had no pity."

"Pity" is almost the characteristic word of Dino Compagni--pity alike for foe or friend; for the warriors of Arezzo or the starved-out patriots of Pistoja as well as for the heroes of his own Florence; pity for the victims of her feuds, and even for the men who drove them into exile; pity, most of all, for Florence herself. We read his story indeed at first with a strange sense of disappointment and surprise. To the modern reader the story of Florence in the years which Dino covers is above all the story of Dante. As the 'Chronicle' jots patiently down the hopes and fears, the failures and successes of the wiser citizens in that struggle for order and good government which brought Dante to his long exile, we feel ourselves standing in the very midst of events out of which grew the threefold Poem of the After-World and face to face with the men who front us in the 'Inferno' and 'Paradise.' But this is not the world Dino stands in. Of what seem to us the greater elements of the life around him he sees and tells us nothing. Of art or letters his 'Chronicle' says never a word. The name of Dante is mentioned but once and then without a syllable of comment. It is not in Dante that Dino interests himself: his one interest, his one passion is Florence.

And yet as we read page after page a new interest in the story grows on us, the interest that Dino himself felt in the tragedy around him. Our sympathies go with that earnest group of men to which he belonged, men who struggled honestly to reconcile freedom and order in a State torn with antipathies of the past, with jealousies and ambitions and feuds of the present. The terrible sadness of the 'Divina Commedia' becomes more intelligible as we follow step by step the ruin of those hopes for his country which Dante entertained as well as Dino. And beyond this interest there is the social picture of the Florence of the fourteenth century itself, its strange medley of past and present, the old world of feudalism jostling with the new world of commerce, the trader elbowing the noble and the artisan the trader, an enthusiastic mystical devotion jealous of the new classicalism or the scepticism of men like Guido Cavalcanti, the petty rivalries of great houses alternating with large schemes of public policy, the tenderest poetry with brutal outrage and lust, the art of Giotto with the slow, patient bloodthirst of the vendetta.

What was the cause--the question presses on us through every page of Dino or of Dante--what was the cause of that ruin which waited in Florence as in every Italian city on so short a burst of freedom? What was it that foiled alike the counsel of statesmen and the passionate love of liberty in the people at large? What was it which drove Dante into exile and stung the simple-hearted Dino into a burst of eloquent despair? The answer--if we set aside the silly talk about "democracy" and look simply at the facts themselves--is a very simple one. The ruin of Florentine liberty, like the ruin of liberty elsewhere throughout Italy, lay wholly with its _noblesse_. It was equally perilous for an Italian town to leave its nobles without the walls or to force them to reside within. In their own robber-holds or their own country estates they were a scourge to the trader whose wains rolled temptingly past their walls. Florence, like its fellow Italian States, was driven to the demolition of the feudal castles, and to enforcing the residence of their lords within its own civic bounds. But the danger was only brought nearer home. Excluded by civic jealousy, wise or unwise, from all share in municipal government, their huge palazzi rose like fortresses in every quarter of the city. Within them lay the noble, a wild beast all the fiercer for his confinement in so narrow a den, with the old tastes, hatreds, preferences utterly unchanged, at feud as of old with his fellow-nobles, knit to them only by a common scorn of the burghers and the burgher life around them, stung to madness by his exclusion from all rule in the commonwealth, bitter, revengeful, with the wilfulness of a child, shameless, false, unprincipled.