Anne Hollingsworth Wharton - Italian Days and Ways

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ITALIAN DAYS
AND WAYS

[THIRD EDITION]

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By Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

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Italian Days and Ways. Decorated title and 8 illustrations. Crown, 8vo. Cloth, extra, $1.50 net.

Social Life in the Early Republic. Profusely illustrated. 8vo. Buckram, gilt top, uncut edges, $3.00 net; half levant, $6.00 net.

Salons, Colonial and Republican. Profusely illustrated. 8vo. Buckram, $3.00; three-quarters levant, $6.00.

Heirlooms in Miniatures. Profusely illustrated. 8vo. Buckram, $3.00; three-quarters levant, $6.00.

Through Colonial Doorways. Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.

Colonial Days and Dames. Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.

A Last Century Maid. Illustrated. 4to. Cloth, $1.25.

Castello Sant' Angelo

Title Page

ITALIAN DAYS
AND WAYS

By
Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

With Illustrations

Church of S. Damian, Assisi

PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
MCMVII

Copyright, 1906
By J. B. Lippincott Company

Published, November, 1906

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CONTENTS

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PAGE

I

LA SUPERBA IN THE CLOUDS

II

ALONG THE RIVIERA

III

CAPTURED BY A CABMAN

IV

AN EXCITING DRIVE

V

BELLA ROMA

VI

A POET'S CORNER

VII

ANTIQUITIES AND ORANGE-BLOSSOMS

VIII

VIA APPIA

IX

TU ES PETRUS

X

VALE ROMA

XI

SHORT JOURNEYS

XII

AN UMBRIAN IDYL

XIII

A SUNDAY IN ASSISI

XIV

THE CITY OF FLOWERS

XV

AN EARTHLY PARADISE

XVI

FIESOLE

XVII

HAPS AND HAPPENINGS

XVIII

ANGELA'S LETTER

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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CASTELLO SANT' ANGELO

THE BAY OF NAPLES. Photographed by Dr. Bertha Lewis

ON THE ROAD TO PAESTUM. Photographed by Dr. Bertha Lewis

AN AMAZONIAN TRIBUTE, CAPRI. Photographed by Dr. Bertha Lewis

CYPRESS WALK, HADRIAN'S VILLA

A STREET IN FLORENCE

THE MICHAEL ANGELO WELL AT THE CERTOSA, FLORENCE

PALAZZO REZZONICO

ITALIAN DAYS
AND WAYS

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I
LA SUPERBA IN THE CLOUDS

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Genoa , February 19th.

Your most interesting letter, Sir Philosopher, reached me at Gibraltar, and served to give me a homelike feeling in that alien land of Spain. Any one who can write letters as interesting as yours, from your library, with the mercury at zero outside, and nothing more refreshing to look upon from the window than snow and sleet, does not need to wander in sunny lands and among ancient ruins for an inspiration. No, travel would be absolutely wasted upon you, who require only a cigar and a wood fire to encourage your "reveries of a bachelor."

You wish to know what are my first impressions of Italy, and how we three women get on together? To be perfectly candid with you, we ourselves are not wandering in sunny lands at present, and the cheerful blaze of your library fire would prove most welcome to benumbed fingers and pinched noses.

Our welcome to Genoa was not particularly cheerful. It had been raining for days; the sky was heavy with clouds, and the air chilly and damp. We can well understand why the prudent and all-informing Baedeker advises invalids visiting Genoa at this time to guard against raw winds and abrupt changes of temperature.

We enjoyed coming into the fine harbor, around which Genoa is built upon its hills and terraces in the form of a half-circle, the city widening out toward the ends of the arc. On the hills, we know, are many beautiful villas, seen to-day but dimly through veils of mist, and beyond are the mountains, which in clear weather must add much to the charm of this old fortress as seen from the sea.

Zelphine says that it would be very ungrateful of us if we were to complain of cloudy weather, as the skies might be pouring down upon us instead of only threatening, and, after all, we are having the same good luck that we had in Madeira, Granada, and Algiers in coming after the rain instead of before it.

And how do we get on together? Really, monsieur, you display courage when you ask that question, as I might here and now unburden my mind of a long list of grievances. As it is, however, I have so far no woes to relate, although I know that a sojourn on the Continent has wrecked many a friendship. We three must appear to those who meet us an ill-assorted trio; but because of our individualities we may be the better fitted to stand the crucial test of a tour of indefinite length, whose only object is pleasure.

Zelphine is the encyclopdia of the party, and, as Angela says, her information is always on tap, besides which she is amiable and refreshingly romantic. It is inspiring to travel with a woman, no longer young, to whom the world and its inhabitants still wear "the glory and the dream." On the other hand, when one is suffering from the discomforts of travel to such an extent that it would be a luxury to moan and groan a bit and find fault with the general condition of things, it is a trifle irritating to see Zelphine sailing serenely upon the seas of high content, apparently above such trifling accidents as material comfort. You, being a man and consequently a philosopher of greater or less degree, may not be able to understand this; it is just here that Zelphine and I might quarrel, but we "generally most always" do not.

Angela you have scarcely known since she was a little girl, when she was a prime favorite of yours. In the half-hour in which you saw her, just before we sailed, you must have realized that in appearance she had fulfilled the promise of her beautiful childhood. She is a spirited creature, but with a fine balance of common sense, and with her delicate, spirituelle beauty is astonishingly practicalan up-to-date girl, in fine. Have you ever wondered, among your many ponderings, why the girls of to-day, with the beauty of their great-grandmothers, should be utterly devoid of the sentiment that enhanced the loveliness of those dear ladies as perfume adds to the charm of a flower? This question I leave with you for future solution.

Here in Genoa we meet the narrow, precipitous passages, streets by courtesy, which interested us in the Moorish quarter of Algiers, dating back in both cases to remote antiquity. They are to be found, we are told, in every old Italian town. Many of them answer to Hawthorne's description of the streets of Perugia, which, he says, are "like caverns, being arched all over and plunging down abruptly towards an unknown darkness, which, when you have fathomed its depths, admits you to a daylight that you scarcely hoped to behold again."

Old palaces overshadow these narrow, crooked streets, built many stories high and close together for protection against enemies without and factional feuds at home; such as those between the powerful houses of Doria, Spinola, Fieschi, and the like. The majority of these buildings have fallen from their ancient glory, and look, as Angela says, like tenement houses. This plebeian association is carried out by the squalid appearance of the inhabitants, and by the clothes-lines stretched across the streets from window to window, on which are hung garments of every size, degree, color, and ingenuity of patch, the predominant red and white lending a certain picturesqueness to the motley array.

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