Chapter 9

The supper-room was a sight to behold--the enormous table fairly creaking under the weight of every variety of food filled half the room, leaving very little space for the guests. The sopranos got in first, ahead even of the amiable hostess, who stopped the whole procession, trying to go abreast through the door with a portly cardinal and a white diplomat, leaving us, the hungry black and white sheep, still wrestling with the chairs.

You must have heard of Hamilton Aidé, the author of _The Poet and the Prince_ and other works. He comes frequently to see us, and always brings either a new book or a new song--for he is not only a distinguished author, but a composer as well. He sings willingly when asked. He is very fond of one of his songs, called "The Danube River." If he had not brought the music and I had not seen the title as I laid it on the piano, I should never have known that it was anything so lively as a river he was singing about. Though I could occasionally hear the word "river," I hoped that as the river and singer went on they would have a little more "go" in them; but they continued babbling along regardless of obstacles and time. I was extremely mortified to see that several of my guests had dozed off. The river and the singer had had a too-lullaby effect on them.

ROME, _1883_.

Dear ----,--Next to the Palazzo Tittoni lives a delightful family--the Count and Countess Gigliucci, with a son and two daughters. The Countess is the celebrated Clara Novello of oratorio fame. The three ladies are perfectly charming. I love to go to see them, and often drop in about tea-hour, when I get an excellent cup of English tea and delicious muffins, and enjoy them in this cozy family circle.

Though they live In a palace and have a showy _portier_, they do not disdain to do their shopping out of the window by means of a basket, which the servant-girl lets down on a string for the daily marketing. Even cards and letters are received in this way, as the porter refuses to carry anything up to their third story. "_Sortita!_" screamed down in a shrill voice is the answer to the visitor waiting below in the courtyard.

When the three ladies are sitting at the tea-table dispensing tea, one of them will suddenly commence the trio from "Elijah"--"Lift thine eyes"--the other two joining in (singing without an accompaniment, of course) in the most delicious manner. Their voices are so alike in _timbre_ and quality that it is almost impossible to distinguish one from the other. After the trio they go on pouring out tea as if nothing had happened, whereas for me it is an event. It is such perfection!

Countess Gigliucci comes sometimes and sings with me. Her voice is still beautiful and clear as a bell. What must it have been in its prime? In her letters to me she calls me "my delicious blackbird."

ROME, _March, 1883_.

The King of Sweden came to Rome on an official visit to their Majesties. I suppose it is called official because he is staying as a guest at the Quirinal, therefore he is hardly seen in private. You remember that I saw a good deal of him when he was in Paris in 1867. He was then hereditary Prince to the throne of Sweden, and was called Prince Oscar. He only stayed three days at Rome. There was a gala dinner to which all the diplomats were invited. He greeted me very cordially, shook hands in his genial manner, and talked about the past (sixteen years ago) as if it were yesterday. He said, smilingly:

"You see, since I have become King I have cut my hair."

I had no idea what he meant and looked puzzled.

"Don't you remember," he said, "you called me 'the _Hair_ Apparent' on account of my long locks?"

"Oh, your Majesty," I said, "how could I have been so rude?"

"It was not rudeness," he said, kindly. "You said what you liked in those days. You were not then a diplomat's wife."

The day of his departure from Rome we went to the station. The King was very gracious, and said to Johan, "I hope you and your wife will come some day to Sweden," and gave my hand an extra-hearty squeeze. A hearty squeeze from his hand was something to remember!

* * * * *

The Queen has asked me to sing with her, and I go regularly twice a week to the Quirinal at two o'clock. We sing all kinds of duets, classical and the ultra-modern. The Queen's singing-master, Signor Vera, and sometimes the composer, Signor Marchetti, accompany us--they bring new music which has appeared, which we _déchiffrons_ under their critical eyes. It is the greatest delight I have to be able to be with her Majesty in such an informal way. She is so enchanting, so natural, so gay, and so fascinating. No one can resist her. Am I not a greatly privileged person? I presented Nina to her last week--her Majesty told me to bring her with me on one of our singing-lesson days at half past one--so we had a half-hour of conversation before the singing-master came. The Queen said, after Nina had gone: "What a beauty she is! She will set the world on fire."

_May, 1883._

The visit of the newly married couple, Prince Tomaso, brother of the Queen, and Princess Isabella of Bavaria, has been the occasion of many festivities.

Yesterday there was a garden party in the Quirinal gardens. It was a perfect day, and the beautiful toilets of the ladies made the lawn look like a _parterre_ of living flowers. The grounds are so large that there were several entertainments going on at the same time without interfering with one another.

A band of gipsies in their brilliant dresses were singing in one place, and in a _bosquet_ a troupe of Neapolitans were dancing the tarantella in their white-stockinged feet. There were booths where you could have your photograph taken and your fortune told. Everywhere you were given souvenirs of some kind. One played at the _tombola_ and always got a prize. Buffets, of course, at every turn. We went from one surprise to another. The Prince of Naples was omnipresent and seemed to enjoy himself immensely. Whoever arranged this _fête_ ought to have received a decoration. Twilight and the obligation of having to dress for the evening concert put a stop to this delightful afternoon. In the evening there was a gala concert which was very entertaining. It commenced by a piece written by the Baron Renzie and very well performed by amateurs, and some mandolinists, who played several things more or less acceptably, and then came a long and tedious symphony which was too classical for the majority of the audience. The Queen and the Duchess of Genoa seemed to enjoy it. I did, too, but the King looked bored to death, and the bridegroom went fast to sleep. The Queen, who was sitting next to him, gave him a vigorous pinch to wake him up. The pinch had the intended effect, but the groan he gave was almost too audible. In the interlude when ices were passed the Princess talked with the wives of the diplomats who were brought up to her. The Queen, still laughing at her brother's discomfiture, passed about among the other guests.

_December, 1883._

We returned to Rome a week ago. It was said that their Majesties had expressed the desire that as many diplomats as possible should be present when the Crown Prince of Germany came for his visit to the Quirinal.

During the stay of the Crown-Prince Frederic the crowds waited patiently outside the Quirinal, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. He is very popular, and whenever he shows himself he is cheered to _outrance_. Sometimes he came out on the balcony, and once he took the Prince of Naples up in his strong arms and cried "_Evviva l'Italia_" The people clapped their hands till they were worn out.

There were fireworks from the Castel St. Angelo in his honor which were wonderfully fine.

To reach the balconies reserved for the _Corps Diplomatique_ we were obliged to leave our carriages in a little side-street and go through a long carpeted passage, the walls of which were hung with fine old tapestries taken from the Quirinal in order to hide the unsightly objects concealed behind them. The balconies were erected on the outside of the dilapidated houses which overlook the Tiber and facing the Castel St. Angelo. How they ever managed to make this passage is a mystery! In the daytime one could not see the possibility of cutting through the labyrinth of these forlorn tumble-down houses. We sat trembling for fear that the shaky planks would suddenly give way and plunge us into the whirling Tiber under our feet. The fireworks were the most gorgeous display of pyrotechnics I ever saw. And the bouquet as the _finale_ was a magnificent tornado of fire which left a huge "F" blazing, which lighted up the December night. We were thankful when we reached home alive.

The next and last evening of the festivities was a gala opera, where there was a great deal of clapping and enthusiasm which accompanied a rather poor performance of "Aida." They said that Verdi was in the audience, but he did not appear, nor was there any demonstration made for him.

ROME, _January, 1884_.

My dear ----,--There are a few changes in the Embassies. Sir Saville Lumley has succeeded Sir August Paget at the English Embassy. Sir Saville's own paintings now cover Lady Paget's chocolate cherubs--only those above the door and their bulrushes are left to tell the tale. Monsieur Decrais, the new French Ambassador and his wife, who replace the De Noailles in the Farnese Palace, are already established. The iciness of Siberia continues to pervade the palace in spite of all efforts to warm those vast _salons_, enormous in their proportions--I do not know how many _métres_ they are to the ceiling. The Carracci gallery separates the bedrooms from the _salons_. Madame Decrais says that they are obliged to dress like Eskimos when they cross it, as they do twenty times a day.

How the Roman climate must have changed since the time when the Romans went about in togas and sandals and lay on slabs of marble after their bath!

We are delighted to have our dear friend M. de Schlözer here. He is Minister to the Vatican, and is (or ought to be) as black as ink, while we Quirinalers are as white as the driven snow; but he has no prejudice as to color, nor have we, so we see one another very often and dine together whenever we can. As soon as his silver was unpacked we were invited straightway to dinner. His rooms in the Palazzo Capranica (belonging to the family of Madame Ristori's husband) are as bare as those he occupied in Washington--barer, even, for here there are no _portières_. In the _salon_ he had his beloved Steinway grand, one stiff sofa, four enormous _fauteuils_, destined for his cardinals, a few small gilt _chaises volantes_ (as he calls little chairs that are easy to move about), one table on which reposes the last piece of marble picked up while strolling in the Forum, and, as a supreme banality, his niece's Christmas present, a _lamp-mat_, on which stands the lamp in solitary glory.

Schlözer's dinners are of the best, and are most amusing. He superintends everything himself and gives himself no end of trouble. Each course as it is served receives an introductory speech: "_Ce paté, mon cher, est la gloire de ma cuisinière_" etc.

He says that all _volaille_ ought to be carved at the table, therefore he carves the birds and the chickens himself, brandishing the knife with gusto while sharpening it.

And as for the wines! Dear me! After filling his glass he holds it against the light, tastes the wine, smacks his lips, and says: "_Ce vin de Bordeaux est du '64. Il faut le boire avec recueillement. Je l'ai débouché moi-même_."

He has a great liking for Lenbach (the famous painter), although they are utterly different in character and ways. Lenbach is not musical, and is rather rough and gruff in his manners. Even his best friends acknowledge that he does not possess the thing called manners. He is clever and witty in his way, but his way is sarcastic and peevish. Sometimes when he is talking to you he beams and scowls alternately behind his spectacles. You think that he is listening to you, but not at all! He is only thinking out his own thoughts, in which he seems always to be wrapped.

Lenbach occupies the same apartment in the Palazzo Borghese that Pauline Bonaparte lived in. Probably the very couch is still there on which she reclined for her famous statue. You remember what a modest lady friend said to her, "_Cela m'étonne que vous ayez pu poser comme cela_!"--meaning, without clothes; to which the Princess replied: "But why do you wonder? Canova had a fire in the room."

Lenbach asked permission to paint Nina. We did not refuse, and expected great things. He photographed her twenty times in different poses, turning her head (physically, not morally) every which way, and painted thirteen pictures of her, but there was only one (a very pretty profile in crayon with a pink ear and a little dash of yellow on the hair) which he thought good enough to give us.

Do not ask me what we have done or whom we have seen. We are out morning, noon, and night. Every day there is a regular "precession of the equinoxes"--luncheons, dinners, and _soirées_ galore.

I sing twice a week with the Queen--red-letter days for me. I look forward with joy to passing that hour with her. I never knew any one so full of interest, humor, and intelligence. It is delightful to see her when she is amused. She can laugh so heartily, and no one, when there is occasion for sympathy, is more ready to give it. Her kind eyes can fill with tears as quickly as they can see the fun in a situation.

Nina and I go out every morning from ten to twelve. Johan is then busy with his despatches and shut up in the chancellery. It is the fashion during those hours to drive in a cab in the _Corso_. It is not considered _chic_ to go out in one's own carriage until the afternoon. I am glad of the excuse of buying even a paper of pins in order to be out in the sunshine.

Another queer fashion is that on Sundays gentlemen (the highest of the high) who have their own fine equipages, of which on week-days they are so proud, drive to the fashionable places, like Villa Borghese and Villa Doria, in _cabs_. Sometimes you will see the beaux most in vogue squeezed (three or four of them) in a little _botte_ (the Italian name for cab), looking very uncomfortable. But as it is the thing to do, they are proud and happy to do it. But on other days!--horrible! Nevertheless, it is on Sundays (_especially_ on Sundays) that Principe Massimo causes people to stop and stare because he drives abroad on that day in his high-seated phaeton, his long side-whiskers floating in the wind, his servants in their conspicuous dark-red liveries covered with armorial braid, pale-blue cuffs and collars, sitting behind him. Then it is that the Romans say to themselves, Our aristocracy is not yet dead.

Our colleagues, the de W.'s, had a _loge_ in the Argentina Theater and invited us the other evening to go with them to see the great Salvini in "Hamlet." The theater was filled to the uppermost galleries; you could not have wedged in another person. The people in the audience, when not applauding, were as silent as so many mice; this is unlike the usual theater-going Italian, who reads and rustles his evening paper all through the performance, looking up occasionally to hiss.

Salvini surpassed himself, perhaps on account of the presence of her Majesty, whose eyes never wandered from the stage, except in the _entr'actes_, when she responded to the ovation the public always makes wherever she appears. She rose and bowed with her sweet smile, the smile which wins all hearts.

There was only one hitch during the performance, and that was when Hamlet and Polonius fought the duel; the latter, unfortunately, missed his aim and speared Hamlet's wig with his sword, on which it stuck in spite of the most desperate efforts to shake it off. Salvini, all unconscious, continued fencing until he caught sight of his wig dangling in the air and, realizing his un-Hamlet-like bald head, backed out into the side-wing, leaving Polonius to get off the stage as best he could.

In the _entr'acte_ Monsieur de W. and I talked over the play, and, unfortunately, I said, "Did Hamlet ever exist?" A bomb exploding under our noses could not have been more disastrous! He burst out in indignant tones, and we almost came to literary blows in our violent discussion. M. de W. insists upon it that Shakespeare knew all about Hamlet and where he lived, the medieval clothes he wore, and that he was the sepulchral Prince with whom we are so familiar; that Ophelia was a very misused and unhappy young lady, who drowned herself in a water-lily pond; and that Hamlet's papa used to come nights and scare the life out of the courtiers.

"Wait a little," I said. "I flatter myself that I know the story of Hamlet thoroughly. I spent all last summer studying the old Danish chronicle, which was written in Latin in 1200 by a monk called Saxo Grammaticus, then translated into old-fashioned Danish, which I translated, to amuse myself, into English. If what Saxo says is true Hamlet lived about two or three hundred years before Christ."

"Impossible!" almost screamed my friend.

I went on, regardless of M. de W.'s dangerous attitude: "Denmark at that time was divided into several kingdoms, and Hamlet's father was king in a part of Jutland, which, let us say, was as small as Rhode Island--"

"What nonsense!" interrupted M. de W., indignantly.

"He probably went about in fur-covered legs and a sheepskin over his shoulders, as was then the fashion. He was called Amleth; Shakespeare simply transposed the h. He was a naughty little boy, vicious and revengeful. He despised his mother and hated his uncle, who was his stepfather."

"Why?" asked, in a milder tone, M. de W.

"Because his mother and the uncle, wishing to marry and mount the throne, killed Hamlet's father. Hamlet passed his youth haunted by thoughts of revenge and how he could punish the two sinners."

"It was clever of Shakespeare to let the father do the haunting and leave to Hamlet the _rôle_ of a guileless and sentimental youth; the authorities do not agree as to whether Hamlet was really a fool or only pretended to be one."

"Fool he certainly was not," I replied. "He was clever enough to play the part of one, and he played it so well that no one, even at that time, could make out what he really was."

"Then," declared M. de W., "Shakespeare got that part of it right--perhaps you will concede that much. How about Hamlet's grave? Surely there is no humbug about that? I have seen it myself. Has it been there since two hundred years B.C.?"

"Hamlet's grave at Helsingör is an interesting bit of imagination. A unique instance of inaccuracy on the part of the Danes! Hamlet lived to be king in his little land and was buried where he died--if he ever lived--as an Irishman would say."

"How confusing you are," said my opponent. "You destroy my dearest illusions--I, who adore Shakespeare's Hamlet."

"I adore Shakespeare's Hamlet, too, but I do not adore Saxo's. Hamlet's love for his father was the only redeeming point about him. Did you know that he married the daughter of the King of England?"

"Shakespeare only mentions Ophelia, and we are led to believe that Hamlet died unmarried."

"Well," I answered, "if Saxo is right, he was married, had lots of children, and continued the dynasty till _dato_."

"Go on! You interest me."

"He made himself very disagreeable at home with his silly talk and his hatred of the King and the Queen. In a conversation he had with his mother he flung away all disguise and also hurled some unpleasant and extremely unvarnished truths full in the maternal face."

"That does not speak well for him," said Mr. de W.

"To get rid of him," I continued, warming to my subject, "the Danish court sent him to the English court with a nice letter of introduction, and at the same time sent a letter to the King of England, begging him to have Hamlet killed somehow or other, but clever Hamlet stole and read the letter and killed the messenger himself."

"That shows he was no fool," acknowledged M. de W.

"The King of England gave him a fine dinner, and I think the English court must have opened its eyes when Hamlet pushed away the food, saying it was '_too bad to eat_.' He told them that the bread tasted of dead men's bones and the wine of blood, and, worst of all, that the Queen was not a born lady. When the court asked with one voice how he dared breathe such an insult he answered that there were three things that proved that what he said was true."

"It would amuse me to know what the three things were," said M. de W.

"One was," I said, "that the Queen held up her dress while walking; another, that she threw a shawl over her head; and the last, that she picked her teeth and chewed the contents! I actually blush for the Danes when I read the account of that dinner."

"I confess," laughed de W., "that that _was_ pretty bad. Tell me some more."

"The courtiers hurried to examine into affairs and found that everything that Hamlet said was true. The poor Queen was horribly mortified, for they discovered that her papa had been a peasant."

"I suppose," said M. de W., "that the court forbade the banns after that."

"No," I said, "Hamlet went home with his bride, and the royal Danish court of Jutland made an enormous feast for the home-coming of the princely couple. _This_ was the thing that Hamlet had waited for all his life. Saxo hurries over this harrowing episode. Hamlet succeeded in getting all the guests dead drunk, then he pulled the tapestries all down on top of them and set fire to the palace and burned them all up. What do you think of your adorable Hamlet now?"

"I think," said M. de W., curtly, "all things considered, that Hamlet was a damn fool!"

"I thought so too until I read the speech he made to his subjects when he mounted the throne. It was the most beautiful bit of sentiment, the tenderest tribute to his dead father, and showed his undaunted love for his country. I am sorry that Shakespeare made no mention of this."

Mr. Story, who was with us, said he once heard a lady say she did not care much for Shakespeare, because he was "so full of quotations."

ROME, _1884_.

Dear ----,--The King drives every day in his high English phaeton through the crowded streets, not fearing to expose himself to his people, as some other sovereigns do.

When some one remonstrated with him, "Your Majesty ought not to run such risk," he answered, smilingly: "_Comment donc! C'est un des ennuis de notre métier_." Everybody bows respectfully, and in return he takes off his hat and holds it at right angles, keeping the reins in the other hand. Sometimes he does not get the chance to put his hat back on his head the whole length of the _Corso_. His adjutant sits by his side and a lacquey sits behind, dressed in black. The King likes simplicity in all things.

The Queen drives in a landau (_à huit resorts_), accompanied by her lady in waiting; the servants in their brilliant red liveries can be seen from a long distance. Her Majesty recognizes every one, smiles and bows right and left; sometimes she will look back and give a person an extra smile. She says that she can see, while flying by, all the objects exposed in the shop windows, and often sends the servant back to buy what she has noticed.