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_ Part I Chapter II - In Santa Croce with No Baedeker
It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a
bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean
though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins
and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and
bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows,
pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into
sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches
opposite, and close below, the Arno, gurgling against the
embankment of the road.
Over the river men were at work with spades and sieves on the
sandy foreshore, and on the river was a boat, also diligently
employed for some mysterious end. An electric tram came rushing
underneath the window. No one was inside it, except one tourist;
but its platforms were overflowing with Italians, who preferred
to stand. Children tried to hang on behind, and the conductor,
with no malice, spat in their faces to make them let go. Then
soldiers appeared--good-looking, undersized men--wearing each a
knapsack covered with mangy fur, and a great-coat which had been
cut for some larger soldier. Beside them walked officers, looking
foolish and fierce, and before them went little boys, turning
somersaults in time with the band. The tramcar became entangled
in their ranks, and moved on painfully, like a caterpillar in a
swarm of ants. One of the little boys fell down, and some white
bullocks came out of an archway. Indeed, if it had not been for
the good advice of an old man who was selling button-hooks, the
road might never have got clear.
Over such trivialities as these many a valuable hour may slip
away, and the traveller who has gone to Italy to study the
tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may
return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women
who live under it. So it was as well that Miss Bartlett should
tap and come in, and having commented on Lucy's leaving the door
unlocked, and on her leaning out of the window before she was
fully dressed, should urge her to hasten herself, or the best of
the day would be gone. By the time Lucy was ready her cousin had
done her breakfast, and was listening to the clever lady among
the crumbs.
A conversation then ensued, on not unfamiliar lines. Miss
Bartlett was, after all, a wee bit tired, and thought they had
better spend the morning settling in; unless Lucy would at all
like to go out? Lucy would rather like to go out, as it was her
first day in Florence, but, of course, she could go alone. Miss
Bartlett could not allow this. Of course she would accompany Lucy
everywhere. Oh, certainly not; Lucy would stop with her cousin.
Oh, no! that would never do. Oh, yes!
At this point the clever lady broke in.
"If it is Mrs. Grundy who is troubling you, I do assure you that
you can neglect the good person. Being English, Miss Honeychurch
will be perfectly safe. Italians understand. A dear friend of
mine, Contessa Baroncelli, has two daughters, and when she cannot
send a maid to school with them, she lets them go in sailor-hats
instead. Every one takes them for English, you see, especially if
their hair is strained tightly behind."
Miss Bartlett was unconvinced by the safety of Contessa
Baroncelli's daughters. She was determined to take Lucy herself,
her head not being so very bad. The clever lady then said that
she was going to spend a long morning in Santa Croce, and if Lucy
would come too, she would be delighted.
"I will take you by a dear dirty back way, Miss Honeychurch, and
if you bring me luck, we shall have an adventure."
Lucy said that this was most kind, and at once opened the
Baedeker, to see where Santa Croce was.
"Tut, tut! Miss Lucy! I hope we shall soon emancipate you from
Baedeker. He does but touch the surface of things. As to the true
Italy--he does not even dream of it. The true Italy is only to be
found by patient observation."
This sounded very interesting, and Lucy hurried over her
breakfast, and started with her new friend in high spirits. Italy
was coming at last. The Cockney Signora and her works had
vanished like a bad dream.
Miss Lavish--for that was the clever lady's name--turned to the
right along the sunny Lung' Arno. How delightfully warm! But a
wind down the side streets cut like a knife, didn't it? Ponte
alle Grazie--particularly interesting, mentioned by Dante. San
Miniato--beautiful as well as interesting; the crucifix that
kissed a murderer--Miss Honeychurch would remember the story. The
men on the river were fishing. (Untrue; but then, so is most
information.) Then Miss Lavish darted under the archway of the
white bullocks, and she stopped, and she cried:
"A smell! a true Florentine smell! Every city, let me teach you,
has its own smell."
"Is it a very nice smell?" said Lucy, who had inherited from her
mother a distaste to dirt.
"One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one
comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!" bowing right and
left. "Look at that adorable wine-cart! How the driver stares at
us, dear, simple soul!"
So Miss Lavish proceeded through the streets of the city of
Florence, short, fidgety, and playful as a kitten, though without
a kitten's grace. It was a treat for the girl to be with any one
so clever and so cheerful; and a blue military cloak, such as an
Italian officer wears, only increased the sense of festivity.
"Buon giorno! Take the word of an old woman, Miss Lucy: you will
never repent of a little civility to your inferiors. That is the
true democracy. Though I am a real Radical as well. There, now
you're shocked."
"Indeed, I'm not!" exclaimed Lucy. "We are Radicals, too, out and
out. My father always voted for Mr. Gladstone, until he was so
dreadful about Ireland."
"I see, I see. And now you have gone over to the enemy."
"Oh, please--! If my father was alive, I am sure he would vote
Radical again now that Ireland is all right. And as it is, the
glass over our front door was broken last election, and Freddy is
sure it was the Tories; but mother says nonsense, a tramp."
"Shameful! A manufacturing district, I suppose?"
"No--in the Surrey hills. About five miles from Dorking, looking
over the Weald."
Miss Lavish seemed interested, and slackened her trot.
"What a delightful part; I know it so well. It is full of the
very nicest people. Do you know Sir Harry Otway--a Radical if
ever there was?"
"Very well indeed."
"And old Mrs. Butterworth the philanthropist?" "Why, she rents a
field of us! How funny!"
Miss Lavish looked at the narrow ribbon of sky, and murmured:
"Oh, you have property in Surrey?"
"Hardly any," said Lucy, fearful of being thought a snob. "Only
thirty acres--just the garden, all downhill, and some fields."
Miss Lavish was not disgusted, and said it was just the size of
her aunt's Suffolk estate. Italy receded. They tried to remember
the last name of Lady Louisa some one, who had taken a house near
Summer Street the other year, but she had not liked it, which was
odd of her. And just as Miss Lavish had got the name, she broke
off and exclaimed:
"Bless us! Bless us and save us! We've lost the way."
Certainly they had seemed a long time in reaching Santa Croce,
the tower of which had been plainly visible from the landing
window. But Miss Lavish had said so much about knowing her
Florence by heart, that Lucy had followed her with no misgivings.
"Lost! lost! My dear Miss Lucy, during our political diatribes we
have taken a wrong turning. How those horrid Conservatives would
jeer at us! What are we to do? Two lone females in an unknown
town. Now, this is what I call an adventure."
Lucy, who wanted to see Santa Croce, suggested, as a possible
solution, that they should ask the way there.
"Oh, but that is the word of a craven! And no, you are not, not,
NOT to look at your Baedeker. Give it to me; I shan't let you
carry it. We will simply drift."
Accordingly they drifted through a series of those grey-brown
streets, neither commodious nor picturesque, in which the eastern
quarter of the city abounds. Lucy soon lost interest in the
discontent of Lady Louisa, and became discontented herself. For
one ravishing moment Italy appeared. She stood in the Square of
the Annunziata and saw in the living terra-cotta those divine
babies whom no cheap reproduction can ever stale. There they
stood, with their shining limbs bursting from the garments of
charity, and their strong white arms extended against circlets of
heaven. Lucy thought she had never seen anything more beautiful;
but Miss Lavish, with a shriek of dismay, dragged her forward,
declaring that they were out of their path now by at least a
mile.
The hour was approaching at which the continental breakfast
begins, or rather ceases, to tell, and the ladies bought some hot
chestnut paste out of a little shop, because it looked so
typical. It tasted partly of the paper in which it was wrapped,
partly of hair oil, partly of the great unknown. But it gave them
strength to drift into another Piazza, large and dusty, on the
farther side of which rose a black-and-white facade of surpassing
ugliness. Miss Lavish spoke to it dramatically. It was Santa
Croce. The adventure was over.
"Stop a minute; let those two people go on, or I shall have to
speak to them. I do detest conventional intercourse. Nasty! they
are going into the church, too. Oh, the Britisher abroad!"
"We sat opposite them at dinner last night. They have given us
their rooms. They were so very kind."
"Look at their figures!" laughed Miss Lavish. "They walk through
my Italy like a pair of cows. It's very naughty of me, but I
would like to set an examination paper at Dover, and turn back
every tourist who couldn't pass it."
"What would you ask us?"
Miss Lavish laid her hand pleasantly on Lucy's arm, as if to
suggest that she, at all events, would get full marks. In this
exalted mood they reached the steps of the great church, and were
about to enter it when Miss Lavish stopped, squeaked, flung up
her arms, and cried:
"There goes my local-colour box! I must have a word with him!"
And in a moment she was away over the Piazza, her military cloak
flapping in the wind; nor did she slacken speed till she caught
up an old man with white whiskers, and nipped him playfully upon
the arm.
Lucy waited for nearly ten minutes. Then she began to get tired.
The beggars worried her, the dust blew in her eyes, and she
remembered that a young girl ought not to loiter in public
places. She descended slowly into the Piazza with the intention
of rejoining Miss Lavish, who was really almost too original. But
at that moment Miss Lavish and her local-colour box moved also,
and disappeared down a side street, both gesticulating largely.
Tears of indignation came to Lucy's eyes partly because Miss
Lavish had jilted her, partly because she had taken her Baedeker.
How could she find her way home? How could she find her way about
in Santa Croce? Her first morning was ruined, and she might never
be in Florence again. A few minutes ago she had been all high
spirits, talking as a woman of culture, and half persuading
herself that she was full of originality. Now she entered the
church depressed and humiliated, not even able to remember
whether it was built by the Franciscans or the Dominicans.
Of course, it must be a wonderful building. But how like a barn!
And how very cold! Of course, it contained frescoes by Giotto, in
the presence of whose tactile values she was capable of feeling
what was proper. But who was to tell her which they were? She
walked about disdainfully, unwilling to be enthusiastic over
monuments of uncertain authorship or date. There was no one even
to tell her which, of all the sepulchral slabs that paved the
nave and transepts, was the one that was really beautiful, the
one that had been most praised by Mr. Ruskin.
Then the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of
acquiring information, she began to be happy. She puzzled out the
Italian notices--the notices that forbade people to introduce
dogs into the church--the notice that prayed people, in the
interest of health and out of respect to the sacred edifice in
which they found themselves, not to spit. She watched the
tourists; their noses were as red as their Baedekers, so cold was
Santa Croce. She beheld the horrible fate that overtook three
Papists--two he-babies and a she-baby--who began their career by
sousing each other with the Holy Water, and then proceeded to the
Machiavelli memorial, dripping but hallowed. Advancing towards it
very slowly and from immense distances, they touched the stone
with their fingers, with their handkerchiefs, with their heads,
and then retreated. What could this mean? They did it again and
again. Then Lucy realized that they had mistaken Machiavelli for
some saint, hoping to acquire virtue. Punishment followed
quickly. The smallest he-baby stumbled over one of the sepulchral
slabs so much admired by Mr. Ruskin, and entangled his feet in
the features of a recumbent bishop. Protestant as she was, Lucy
darted forward. She was too late. He fell heavily upon the
prelate's upturned toes.
"Hateful bishop!" exclaimed the voice of old Mr. Emerson, who had
darted forward also. "Hard in life, hard in death. Go out into
the sunshine, little boy, and kiss your hand to the sun, for that
is where you ought to be. Intolerable bishop!"
The child screamed frantically at these words, and at these
dreadful people who picked him up, dusted him, rubbed his
bruises, and told him not to be superstitious.
"Look at him!" said Mr. Emerson to Lucy. "Here's a mess: a baby
hurt, cold, and frightened! But what else can you expect from a
church?"
The child's legs had become as melting wax. Each time that old
Mr. Emerson and Lucy set it erect it collapsed with a roar.
Fortunately an Italian lady, who ought to have been saying her
prayers, came to the rescue. By some mysterious virtue, which
mothers alone possess, she stiffened the little boy's back-bone
and imparted strength to his knees. He stood. Still gibbering
with agitation, he walked away.
"You are a clever woman," said Mr. Emerson. "You have done more
than all the relics in the world. I am not of your creed, but I
do believe in those who make their fellow-creatures happy. There
is no scheme of the universe--"
He paused for a phrase.
"Niente," said the Italian lady, and returned to her prayers.
"I'm not sure she understands English," suggested Lucy.
In her chastened mood she no longer despised the Emersons. She
was determined to be gracious to them, beautiful rather than
delicate, and, if possible, to erase Miss Bartlett's civility by
some gracious reference to the pleasant rooms.
"That woman understands everything," was Mr. Emerson's reply.
"But what are you doing here? Are you doing the church? Are you
through with the church?"
"No," cried Lucy, remembering her grievance. "I came here with
Miss Lavish, who was to explain everything; and just by the door
--it is too bad!--she simply ran away, and after waiting quite a
time, I had to come in by myself."
"Why shouldn't you?" said Mr. Emerson.
"Yes, why shouldn't you come by yourself?" said the son,
addressing the young lady for the first time.
"But Miss Lavish has even taken away Baedeker."
"Baedeker?" said Mr. Emerson. "I'm glad it's THAT you minded.
It's worth minding, the loss of a Baedeker. THAT'S worth
minding."
Lucy was puzzled. She was again conscious of some new idea, and
was not sure whither it would lead her.
"If you've no Baedeker," said the son, "you'd better join us."
Was this where the idea would lead? She took refuge in her
dignity.
"Thank you very much, but I could not think of that. I hope you
do not suppose that I came to join on to you. I really came to
help with the child, and to thank you for so kindly giving us
your rooms last night. I hope that you have not been put to any
great inconvenience."
"My dear," said the old man gently, "I think that you are
repeating what you have heard older people say. You are
pretending to be touchy; but you are not really. Stop being so
tiresome, and tell me instead what part of the church you want to
see. To take you to it will be a real pleasure."
Now, this was abominably impertinent, and she ought to have been
furious. But it is sometimes as difficult to lose one's temper as
it is difficult at other times to keep it. Lucy could not get
cross. Mr. Emerson was an old man, and surely a girl might humour
him. On the other hand, his son was a young man, and she felt
that a girl ought to be offended with him, or at all events be
offended before him. It was at him that she gazed before
replying.
"I am not touchy, I hope. It is the Giottos that I want to see,
if you will kindly tell me which they are."
The son nodded. With a look of sombre satisfaction, he led the
way to the Peruzzi Chapel. There was a hint of the teacher about
him. She felt like a child in school who had answered a question
rightly.
The chapel was already filled with an earnest congregation, and
out of them rose the voice of a lecturer, directing them how to
worship Giotto, not by tactful valuations, but by the standards
of the spirit.
"Remember," he was saying, "the facts about this church of Santa
Croce; how it was built by faith in the full fervour of
medievalism, before any taint of the Renaissance had appeared.
Observe how Giotto in these frescoes--now, unhappily, ruined by
restoration--is untroubled by the snares of anatomy and
perspective. Could anything be more majestic, more pathetic,
beautiful, true? How little, we feel, avails knowledge and
technical cleverness against a man who truly feels!"
"No!" exclaimed Mr. Emerson, in much too loud a voice for church.
"Remember nothing of the sort! Built by faith indeed! That simply
means the workmen weren't paid properly. And as for the frescoes,
I see no truth in them. Look at that fat man in blue! He must
weigh as much as I do, and he is shooting into the sky like an
air balloon."
He was referring to the fresco of the "Ascension of St. John."
Inside, the lecturer's voice faltered, as well it might. The
audience shifted uneasily, and so did Lucy. She was sure that she
ought not to be with these men; but they had cast a spell over
her. They were so serious and so strange that she could not
remember how to behave.
"Now, did this happen, or didn't it? Yes or no?"
George replied:
"It happened like this, if it happened at all. I would rather go
up to heaven by myself than be pushed by cherubs; and if I got
there I should like my friends to lean out of it, just as they do
here."
"You will never go up," said his father. "You and I, dear boy,
will lie at peace in the earth that bore us, and our names will
disappear as surely as our work survives."
"Some of the people can only see the empty grave, not the saint,
whoever he is, going up. It did happen like that, if it happened
at all."
"Pardon me," said a frigid voice. "The chapel is somewhat small
for two parties. We will incommode you no longer."
The lecturer was a clergyman, and his audience must be also his
flock, for they held prayer-books as well as guide-books in their
hands. They filed out of the chapel in silence. Amongst them were
the two little old ladies of the Pension Bertolini--Miss Teresa
and Miss Catherine Alan.
"Stop!" cried Mr. Emerson. "There's plenty of room for us all.
Stop!"
The procession disappeared without a word.
Soon the lecturer could be heard in the next chapel, describing
the life of St. Francis.
"George, I do believe that clergyman is the Brixton curate."
George went into the next chapel and returned, saying "Perhaps he
is. I don't remember."
"Then I had better speak to him and remind him who I am. It's
that Mr. Eager. Why did he go? Did we talk too loud? How
vexatious. I shall go and say we are sorry. Hadn't I better? Then
perhaps he will come back."
"He will not come back," said George.
But Mr. Emerson, contrite and unhappy, hurried away to apologize
to the Rev. Cuthbert Eager. Lucy, apparently absorbed in a
lunette, could hear the lecture again interrupted, the anxious,
aggressive voice of the old man, the curt, injured replies of his
opponent. The son, who took every little contretemps as if it
were a tragedy, was listening also.
"My father has that effect on nearly every one," he informed her.
"He will try to be kind."
"I hope we all try," said she, smiling nervously.
"Because we think it improves our characters. But he is kind to
people because he loves them; and they find him out, and are
offended, or frightened."
"How silly of them!" said Lucy, though in her heart she
sympathized; "I think that a kind action done tactfully--"
"Tact!"
He threw up his head in disdain. Apparently she had given the
wrong answer. She watched the singular creature pace up and down
the chapel. For a young man his face was rugged, and--until the
shadows fell upon it--hard. Enshadowed, it sprang into
tenderness. She saw him once again at Rome, on the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel, carrying a burden of acorns. Healthy and
muscular, he yet gave her the feeling of greyness, of tragedy
that might only find solution in the night. The feeling soon
passed; it was unlike her to have entertained anything so subtle.
Born of silence and of unknown emotion, it passed when Mr.
Emerson returned, and she could re-enter the world of rapid talk,
which was alone familiar to her.
"Were you snubbed?" asked his son tranquilly.
"But we have spoilt the pleasure of I don't know how many people.
They won't come back."
"...full of innate sympathy...quickness to perceive good in
others...vision of the brotherhood of man..." Scraps of the
lecture on St. Francis came floating round the partition wall.
"Don't let us spoil yours," he continued to Lucy. "Have you
looked at those saints?"
"Yes," said Lucy. "They are lovely. Do you know which is the
tombstone that is praised in Ruskin?"
He did not know, and suggested that they should try to guess it.
George, rather to her relief, refused to move, and she and the
old man wandered not unpleasantly about Santa Croce, which,
though it is like a barn, has harvested many beautiful things
inside its walls. There were also beggars to avoid. and guides to
dodge round the pillars, and an old lady with her dog, and here
and there a priest modestly edging to his Mass through the groups
of tourists. But Mr. Emerson was only half interested. He watched
the lecturer, whose success he believed he had impaired, and then
he anxiously watched his son.
"Why will he look at that fresco?" he said uneasily. "I saw
nothing in it."
"I like Giotto," she replied. "It is so wonderful what they say
about his tactile values. Though I like things like the Della
Robbia babies better."
"So you ought. A baby is worth a dozen saints. And my baby's
worth the whole of Paradise, and as far as I can see he lives in
Hell."
Lucy again felt that this did not do.
"In Hell," he repeated. "He's unhappy."
"Oh, dear!" said Lucy.
"How can he be unhappy when he is strong and alive? What more is
one to give him? And think how he has been brought up--free from
all the superstition and ignorance that lead men to hate one
another in the name of God. With such an education as that, I
thought he was bound to grow up happy."
She was no theologian, but she felt that here was a very foolish
old man, as well as a very irreligious one. She also felt that
her mother might not like her talking to that kind of person, and
that Charlotte would object most strongly.
"What are we to do with him?" he asked. "He comes out for his
holiday to Italy, and behaves--like that; like the little child
who ought to have been playing, and who hurt himself upon the
tombstone. Eh? What did you say?"
Lucy had made no suggestion. Suddenly he said:
"Now don't be stupid over this. I don't require you to fall in
love with my boy, but I do think you might try and understand
him. You are nearer his age, and if you let yourself go I am sure
you are sensible. You might help me. He has known so few women,
and you have the time. You stop here several weeks, I suppose?
But let yourself go. You are inclined to get muddled, if I may
judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths
those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in
the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding
George you may learn to understand yourself. It will be good for
both of you."
To this extraordinary speech Lucy found no answer.
"I only know what it is that's wrong with him; not why it is."
"And what is it?" asked Lucy fearfully, expecting some harrowing
tale.
"The old trouble; things won't fit."
"What things?"
"The things of the universe. It is quite true. They don't."
"Oh, Mr. Emerson, whatever do you mean?"
In his ordinary voice, so that she scarcely realized he was
quoting poetry, he said:
"'From far, from eve and morning,
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I'
George and I both know this, but why does it distress him? We
know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to
them; that all life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the
eternal smoothness. But why should this make us unhappy? Let us
rather love one another, and work and rejoice. I don't believe in
this world sorrow."
Miss Honeychurch assented.
"Then make my boy think like us. Make him realize that by the
side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes--a transitory Yes if
you like, but a Yes."
Suddenly she laughed; surely one ought to laugh. A young man
melancholy because the universe wouldn't fit, because life was a
tangle or a wind, or a Yes, or something!
"I'm very sorry," she cried. "You'll think me unfeeling, but--but
--" Then she became matronly. "Oh, but your son wants employment.
Has he no particular hobby? Why, I myself have worries, but I can
generally forget them at the piano; and collecting stamps did no
end of good for my brother. Perhaps Italy bores him; you ought to
try the Alps or the Lakes."
The old man's face saddened, and he touched her gently with his
hand. This did not alarm her; she thought that her advice had
impressed him and that he was thanking her for it. Indeed, he no
longer alarmed her at all; she regarded him as a kind thing, but
quite silly. Her feelings were as inflated spiritually as they
had been an hour ago esthetically, before she lost Baedeker. The
dear George, now striding towards them over the tombstones,
seemed both pitiable and absurd. He approached, his face in the
shadow. He said:
"Miss Bartlett."
"Oh, good gracious me!" said Lucy, suddenly collapsing and again
seeing the whole of life in a new perspective. "Where? Where?"
"In the nave."
"I see. Those gossiping little Miss Alans must have--" She
checked herself.
"Poor girl!" exploded Mr. Emerson. "Poor girl!"
She could not let this pass, for it was just what she was feeling
herself.
"Poor girl? I fail to understand the point of that remark. I
think myself a very fortunate girl, I assure you. I'm thoroughly
happy, and having a splendid time. Pray don't waste time mourning
over me. There's enough sorrow in the world, isn't there, without
trying to invent it. Good-bye. Thank you both so much for all
your kindness. Ah, yes! there does come my cousin. A delightful
morning! Santa Croce is a wonderful church."
She joined her cousin. _
Read next: Part I: Chapter III - Music, Violets, and the Letter "S"
Read previous: Part I: Chapter I - The Bertolini
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