Читать книгу The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2) - Lady Isabel Burton - Страница 13

Landing in England was dolorous. Grandmamma Baker inflated her nostrils, and, delighted at escaping from those crapauds and their kickshaws, quoted with effusion her favourite Cowper, "England, with all thy faults, I love thee still." The children scoffed. The air of Brighton, full of smoke and blacks, appeared to them unfit for breathing. The cold grey seas made them shudder. In the town everything appeared so small, so prim, so mean, the little one-familied houses contrasting in such a melancholy way with the big buildings of Tours and Paris. We revolted against the coarse and half-cooked food, and, accustomed to the excellent Bordeaux of France, we found port, sherry, and beer like strong medicine; the bread, all crumb and no crust, appeared to be half baked, and milk meant chalk and water. The large joints of meat made us think of Robinson Crusoe, and the vegetables cuite à l'eau, especially the potatoes, which had never heard of "Maître d'hôtel" suggested the roots of primitive man. Moreover, the national temper, fierce and surly, was a curious contrast to the light-hearted French of middle France. A continental lady of those days cautioned her son, who was about to travel, against ridicule in France and the canaille in England. The little children punched one another's heads on the sands, the boys punched one another's heads in the streets, and in those days a stand-up fight between men was not uncommon. Even the women punched their children, and the whole lower-class society seemed to be governed by the fist.

School at Richmond.

My father had determined to send his boys to Eton to prepare for Oxford and Cambridge. In the mean time some blundering friend had recommended him a preparatory school. This was kept by the Rev. Charles Delafosse, who rejoiced in the title of Chaplain to the Duke of Cumberland, a scion of royalty, who had, apparently, very little to do with the Church. Accordingly, the family went to Richmond, the only excitement of the journey being the rage of the post-boys, when we boys on the box furtively poked their horses with long sticks. After sundry attempts at housing themselves in the tiny doll-rooms in the stuffy village, they at last found a house, so called by courtesy, in "Maids of Honour Row," between the river and the Green, a house with a strip of garden fronting it, which a sparrow could hop across in thirty seconds. Opening upon the same Green, stood that horror of horrors, the school, or the "Establishment," as it would now be called. It consisted of a large block of buildings (detached), lying between the Green and the Old Town, which has long been converted into dwelling-houses. In those days it had a kind of paling round a paddock, forming a long parallelogram, which enclosed some fine old elm trees. One side was occupied by the house, and the other by the school-room. In the upper stories of the former, were the dormitories with their small white beds, giving the idea of the Lilliput Hospital; a kind of outhouse attached to the dwelling was the place where the boys fed at two long tables stretching the whole length of the room. The only decoration of the palings were names cut all over their inner surfaces and rectangular nails at the top, acting as chevaux de frise. The school-room was the usual scene of hacked and well-used benches and ink-stained desks, everything looking as mean and uncomfortable as possible.

This was the kind of Dotheboys Hall, to which, in those days, gentlemen were contented to send their sons, paying a hundred a year, besides "perquisites" (plunder): on the Continent the same treatment would be had for £20.

The Rev. Charles was a bluff and portly man, with dark hair and short whiskers, whose grand aquiline nose took a prodigious deal of snuff, and was not over active with the rod; but he was no more fit to be a schoolmaster than the Grand Cham of Tartary. He was, however, rather a favourite with the boys, and it was shrewdly whispered, that at times he returned from dining abroad half-seas over. His thin-lipped wife took charge of the ménage, and looked severely after the provisions, and swayed with an iron sceptre the maid-servants, who had charge of the smaller boys. The ushers were the usual consequential lot of those days. There was the handsome and dressy usher, a general favourite with the fair; the shabby and mild usher, despised by even the smallest boy; and the unfortunate French usher, whose life was a fair foretaste of Purgatory.

Instead of learning anything at this school, my brother and I lost much of what we knew, especially in French, and the principal acquisitions were, a certain facility of using our fists, and a general development of ruffianism. I was in one perpetual scene of fights; at one time I had thirty-two affairs of honour to settle, the place of meeting being the school-room, with the elder boys sitting in judgment. On the first occasion I received a blow in the eye, which I thought most unfair, and having got my opponent down I proceeded to hammer his head against the ground, using his ears by way of handles. My indignation knew no bounds when I was pulled off by the bystanders, and told to let my enemy stand up again. "Stand up!" I cried, "after all the trouble I've had to get the fellow down." At last the fighting went on to such an extent, that I was beaten as thin as a shotten herring, and the very servant-maids, when washing me on Saturday night, used to say, "Drat the child! what has he been doing? he's all black and blue." Edward fought just as well as I did, but he was younger and more peaceable. Maria says that I was a thin, dark little boy, with small features and large black eyes, and was extremely proud, sensitive, shy, nervous, and of a melancholy, affectionate disposition. Such is the effect of a boys' school after a few months' trial, when the boys learn to despise mother and sisters, and to affect the rough as much as possible, and this is not only in England, but everywhere where the boy first escapes from petticoat government. He does not know what to do to show his manliness. There is no stronger argument in favour of mixed schools, up to a certain age, of boys and girls together.

At the little Richmond theatre we were taken to see Edmund Kean, who lived in a cottage on the Green. He had gentle blood in his veins, grandson (illegitimate) of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, and that accounted for his Italian, or rather un-John-Bull appearance, and for his fiery power. I saw him in his famous Richard III. rôle, and remember only what old Colley Grattan described, "Looks bloated with brandy, nose red, cheeks blotched, and eyes blood-shot." He was drinking himself to death. His audience appeared not a little afraid of him; perhaps they had heard of the Guernsey scene, where he stood at the footlights and flashed out, "Unmannered dogs! stand ye where I command."

Our parents very unwisely determined to correct all personal vanity in their offspring by always dwelling upon our ugliness. My nose was called cocked; it was a Cross which I had to carry, and was a perpetual plague to me; and I was assured that the only decent feature in my face was my teeth. Maria, on account of her fresh complexion, was called Blousabella; and even Edward, whose features were perfect, and whom Frenchmen used to stop and stare at in the streets, and call him "Le petit Napoleon," was told to nauseousness that "handsome is as handsome does." In later life we were dressed in a marvellous fashion; a piece of yellow nankin would be bought to dress the whole family, like three sticks of barley sugar. Such was the discipline of the day, and nothing could be more ill-judged; it inflicted an amount of torment upon sensitive children which certainly was not intended, but which had the very worst effect.

If we children quarrelled, and turned up our noses at the food in English hotels, what must have been our surprise at the food of an English school? Breakfast at 8 a.m., consisting of very blue milk and water, in chipped and broken-handled mugs of the same colour. The boys were allowed tea from home, but it was a perpetual battle to get a single drink of it. The substantials were a wedge of bread with a glazing of butter. The epicures used to collect the glazing to the end of the slice in order to convert it into a final bonne bouche. The dinner at one o'clock began with stickjaw (pudding) and ended with meat, as at all second-rate schools. The latter was as badly cooked as possible, black out and blue inside, gristly and sinewy. The vegetables were potatoes, which could serve for grapeshot, and the hateful carrot. Supper was a repetition of breakfast, and, at an age when boys were making bone and muscle, they went hungry to bed.

Occasionally the pocket-money and tips were clubbed, and a "room" would go in for a midnight feed of a quartern loaf, ham, polony, and saveloys, with a quantity of beer and wine, which generally led to half a dozen fights. Saturday was a day to be feared on account of its peculiar pie, which contained all the waifs and strays of the week. On the Sunday there was an attempt at plum-pudding of a peculiarly pale and leaden hue, as if it had been unjustly defrauded of its due allowance of plums. And this dull routine lasted throughout the scholastic year. School hours were from seven till nine, and ten to one, and three to five, without other changes, save at the approach of the holidays, when a general burst of singing, locally called "challenging," took place. Very few were the schoolfellows we met in after life. The ragged exceptions were Guildford Onslow, the Claimant's friend. Tuckey Baines, as he was called on account of his exploits on Saturday pie, went into the Bombay army, and was as disagreeable and ill-conditioned as when he was a bully at school. He was locally celebrated for hanging the wrong Mahommad, and for his cure for Sindee litigiousness, by making complainant and defendant flog each other in turn. The only schoolboy who did anything worthy, was Bobby Delafosse (who was appointed to the 26th Regiment, N.I.), who showed immense pluck, and died fighting bravely in the Indian Mutiny. I met him in Bombay shortly before I went off to the North-West Provinces, but my remembrances of the school were so painful, that I could not bear to recognize him. In fact, that part of life, which most boys dwell upon with the greatest pleasure, and concerning which, most autobiographers tell the longest stories—school and college—was ever a nightmare to us. It was like the "Blacking-shop" of Charles Dickens.

Measles disperse the School.

Before the year concluded, an attack of measles broke out in the school, several of the boys died, and it was found necessary to disperse the survivors. We were not hard-hearted, but we were delighted to get home. We worked successfully on the fears of Aunt G., which was assisted by my cadaverous appearance, and it was resolved to move us from school, to our infinite joy. My father had also been thoroughly sick of "Maids of Honour Row" and "Richmond Green." He was sighing for shooting and boar-hunting in the French forests, and he felt that he had done quite enough for the education of the boys, which was turning out so badly. He resolved to bring us up abroad, and picked up the necessary assistance for educating us by tutor and governess. Miss Ruxton, a stout red-faced girl, was thoroughly up in the three R's, and was intended to direct Maria's education. Mr. Du Pré, an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford, son of the Rector of Berkhampstead, wanted to see life on the Continent, and was not unwilling to see it with a salary. He was an awkward-looking John Bull article, with a narrow forehead, eyes close together, and thick lips, which secured him a perpetual course of caricaturing. He used to hit out hard whenever he found the caricatures, but only added bitterness to them. Before he had been in the family a week, I obliged him with a sketch of his tomb and the following inscription:—

"Stand, passenger! hang down thy head and weep,

A young man from Exeter here doth sleep;

If any one ask who that young man be,

'Tis the Devil's dear friend and companion—Du Pré"—

which was merely an echo of Shakespeare and John à Combe, but it showed a fine sense of independence.

I really caught the measles at school, and was nursed by Grandmamma Baker in Park Street. It was the only infantine malady that I ever had. The hooping-cough only attacked me on my return from Harar, when staying with my friend Dr. Steinhaüser at Aden, in 1853. As soon as I was well enough to travel, the family embarked at the Tower Wharf for Boulogne. We boys scandalized every one on board. We shrieked, we whooped, we danced for joy. We shook our fists at the white cliffs, and loudly hoped we should never see them again. We hurrah'd for France, and hooted for England, "The Land on which the Sun ne'er sets—nor rises," till the sailor who was hoisting the Jack, looked upon us as a pair of little monsters. In our delight at getting away from school and the stuffy little island, we had no idea of the disadvantages which the new kind of life would inflict on our future careers. We were too young to know. A man who brings up his family abroad, and who lives there for years, must expect to lose all the friends who could be useful to him when he wishes to start them in life. The conditions of society in England are so complicated, and so artificial, that those who would make their way in the world, especially in public careers, must be broken to it from their earliest day. The future soldiers and statesmen must be prepared by Eton and Cambridge. The more English they are, even to the cut of their hair, the better. In consequence of being brought up abroad, we never thoroughly understood English society, nor did society understand us. And, lastly, it is a real advantage to belong to some parish. It is a great thing, when you have won a battle, or explored Central Africa, to be welcomed home by some little corner of the Great World, which takes a pride in your exploits, because they reflect honour upon itself. In the contrary condition you are a waif, a stray; you are a blaze of light, without a focus. Nobody outside your own fireside cares.

No man ever gets on in the world, or rises to the head of affairs, unless he is a representative of his nation. Taking the marking characters of the last few years—Palmerston, Thiers, Cavour, and Bismarck—what were they but simply the types of their various nationalities? In point of intellect Cavour was a first-rate man, Thiers second-rate, Palmerston third-rate, whilst Bismarck was strength, Von Moltke brain. Their success in life was solely owing to their representing the failings, as well as the merits of their several nationalities. Thiers, for instance, was the most thoroughbred possible épicier, and yet look at his success. And his death was mourned even in England, and yet he was the bitterest enemy that England ever had. His Chauvinism did more than the Crimean War to abolish the prestige of England. Unhappily for his Chauvinism, it also thoroughly abolished France.

Mr. Du Pré, the tutor, and Miss Ruxton, the governess, had their work cut out for them. They attempted to commence with a strict discipline; for instance, the family passing through Paris lodged at the Hôtel Windsor, and they determined to walk the youngsters out school fashion. The consequence was that when the walk extended to the boulevards, the young ones, on agreement, knowing Paris well, suddenly ran away, and were home long before the unfortunate strangers could find their way, and reported that their unlucky tutor and governess had been run over by an omnibus. There was immense excitement till the supposed victims walked in immensely tired, having wandered over half Paris, not being able to find their way. A scene followed, but the adversaries respected each other more after that day.

The difficulty was now where to colonize. One of the peculiarities of the little English colonies was the unwillingness of their denizens to return to them when once they had left them. My father had been very happy at Tours, and yet he religiously avoided it. He passed through Orleans—a horrid hole, with as many smells as Cologne—and tried to find a suitable country house near it, but in vain; everything seemed to smell of goose and gutter. Then he drifted on to Blois, in those days a kind of home of the British stranger, and there he thought proper to call a halt. At last a house was found on the high ground beyond the city, which, like Tours, lies mainly on the left bank of the river, and where most of the English colonists dwelt. There is no necessity of describing this little bit of England in France, which was very like Tours. When one describes one colony, one describes them all. The notables were Sir Joseph Leeds, Colonel Burnes, and a sister of Sir Stamford Raffles, who lived in the next-door villa, if such a term may be applied to a country house in France in 1831. The only difference from Tours was, there was no celebrated physician, no pack of hounds, and no parson. Consequently service on Sundays had to be read at home by the tutor, and the evening was distinguished by one of Blair's sermons. This was read out by us children, each taking a turn. The discourse was from one of Blair's old three volumes, which appeared to have a soporific effect upon the audience. Soft music was gradually heard proceeding from the nasal organs of father and mother, tutor and governess; and then we children, preserving the same tone of voice, entered into a conversation, and discussed matters, until the time came to a close.

Education at Blois.

At Blois we were now entering upon our teens; our education was beginning in real earnest. Poor Miss Ruxton soon found her task absolutely impossible, and threw up the service. A schoolroom was instituted, where time was wasted upon Latin and Greek for six or seven hours a day, besides which there was a French master—one of those obsolete little old men, who called themselves Professeurs-ès-lettres, and the great triumph of whose life was that he had read Herodotus in the original. The dancing-master was a large and pompous oldster, of course an ancien militaire, whose kit and whose capers were by contrast peculiarly ridiculous, and who quoted at least once every visit, "Oh, Richard! oh, mon roi!" He taught, besides country dances, square and round, the Minuet de la Cour, the Gavotte de Vestris, and a Danse Chinoise, which consisted mainly in turning up thumbs and toes. The only favourite amongst all those professors was the fencing-master, also an old soldier, who had lost the thumb of his right hand in the wars, which of course made him a gauché in loose fencing. We boys gave ourselves up with ardour to this study, and passed most of our leisure hours in exchanging thrusts. We soon learned not to neglect the mask: I passed my foil down Edward's throat, and nearly destroyed his uvula, which caused me a good deal of sorrow. The amusements consisted chiefly of dancing at evening parties, we boys choosing the tallest girls, especially a very tall Miss Donovan. A little fishing was to be had, my father being a great amateur. There were long daily walks, swimming in summer, and brass cannons, bought in the toy shops, were loaded to bursting.

The swimming was very easily taught; in the present day boys and girls go to school and learn it like dancing. In our case Mr. Du Pré supported us by a hand under the stomach, taught us how to use our arms and legs, and to manage our breath, after which he withdrew his hand and left us to float as we best could.

This life lasted for a year, till all were thoroughly tired of it. Our father and mother were imperceptibly lapsing into the category of professed invalids, like people who have no other business in life, except to be sick. This was a class exceptionally common in the unoccupied little English colonies that studded the country. It was a far robuster institution than the Parisian invalid, whose object in life was to appear maladive et souffrante. The British malade consumed a considerable quantity of butcher's meat, but although he or she always saw death in the pot, they had not the moral courage to refuse what disagreed with them. They tried every kind of drug and nostrum known, and answered every advertisement, whether it agreed with their complaint or not. Their table de nuit was covered with bottles and gallipots. They dressed themselves three or four times a day for the change of climate, and insensibly acquired a horror of dining out, or passing the evening away from home. They had a kind of rivalry with other invalids; nothing offended them more than to tell them that they were in strong health, and that if they had been hard-worked professionals in England, they would have been ill once a year, instead of once a month. Homœopathy was a great boon to them, and so was hydropathy. So was the grape-cure and all the humbug invented by non-professionals, such as hunger-cure and all that nonsense.

Our parents suffered from asthma, an honest and respectable kind of complaint, which if left to itself, allows you, like gout, to last till your eightieth year, but treated systematically, and with the aid of the doctor, is apt to wear you out. Grandmamma Baker, who came over to Blois, compared them in her homely Scotch fashion to two buckets in a well. She was very wroth with my father, when, remembering the days of his youth, he began to hug the idea of returning to Italy and seeing the sun, and the general conclusion of her philippics ("You'll kill your wife, sir") did not change his resolution. She even insinuated that in the olden day there had been a Sicilian young woman who received the Englishman's pay, and so distributed it as to keep off claims. So Grandmamma Baker was sent off to her beloved England, "whose faults she still loved."

They leave Blois for Italy.

The old yellow chariot was brought out of the dusty coach-house once more, and furbished up, and, after farewell dinners and parties all round, the family turned their back on Blois. The journey was long, being broken by sundry attacks of asthma, and the posting and style of travel were full of the usual discomforts. In crossing over the Tarare a drunken postilion nearly threw one of the carriages over the precipice, and in shooting the Pont de St. Esprit the steamer nearly came to grief under one of the arches. We stayed a short time in Lyons, in those days a perfect den of thieves. From Avignon my tutor and I were driven to the Fountain of Vaucluse, the charming blue well in the stony mountain, and the memories of Petrarch and Laura were long remembered. The driver insisted upon a full gallop, and the protests of the unfortunate Englishman, who declared every quarter of an hour that he was the father of a large family, were utterly disregarded.

The first view of Provence was something entirely new, and the escape was hailed from the flat fields and the long poplar avenues of Central France. Everything, even the most squalid villages, seemed to fall into a picture. It was something like a sun that burst upon the rocks. The olive trees laden with purple fruit were a delight after the apples and pears, and the contrast between the brown rock and the blue Mediterranean, was quite a new sensation. At Marseilles we embarked for Leghorn, which was then, in Italy, very much what Lyons was in France. It was the head-quarters of brigands. Indeed it was reported that a society existed, whose members were pledged to stab their fellow-creatures, whenever they could do it safely. And it was brought to light by the remorse of a son, who had killed his father by mistake. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, with his weak benevolence, was averse to shedding blood, and the worst that these wretches expected was to be dressed in the red or the yellow of the Galeotti, and to sweep the streets and to bully the passenger for bakshish. Another unpleasant development was the quantity of vermin—even the washerwoman's head appeared to be walking off her shoulders. Still there was a touch of Italian art about the place, in the days before politics and polemics had made Italian art, with the sole exception of sculpture, the basest thing on the Continent: the rooms were large, high, and airy, the frescoes on the ceiling were good, and the pictures had not been sold to Englishmen, and replaced by badly coloured daubs, and cheap prints of the illustrated paper type.

Pisa.

After a few days, finding Leghorn utterly unfit to inhabit, my father determined to transfer himself to Pisa. There, after the usual delay, he found a lodging on the wrong side of the Arno—that is to say, the side which does not catch the winter sun—in a huge block of buildings opposite the then highest bridge. Dante's old "Vituperio delle gante" was then the dullest abode known to man, except perhaps his sepulchre. The climate was detestable (Iceland on the non-sunny, Madeira on the sunny side of the river), but the doctors thought it good enough for their patients; consequently it was the hospital of a few sick Britishers upon a large scale. These unfortunates had much better have been left at home instead of being sent to die of discomfort in Tuscany, but there they would have died upon the doctor's hands. The dullness of the place was something preternatural.

The Italians had their own amusements. The principal one was the opera, a perfect den of impurity, where you were choked by the effluvia of pastrane or the brigands' cloaks, which descended from grandfather to grandson. The singing, instrumentation, and acting were equally vile, but the Pisani had not the critical ferocity of the Livornesi, who were used to visit the smallest defect with "Torni in iscena, bestia!" The other form of amusement was the conversazione. Here you entered about six o'clock, and found an enormous room, with a dwarf sofa and an avenue of two lines of chairs projecting from it perpendicularly. You were expected to walk through the latter, which were occupied by the young women, to the former, upon which sat the dowagers, and after the three saluts d'usage and the compliments of the season, you backed out by the way you came in, and then passed the evening leaning over the back of the chair of the fair dame whose cavaliere servente you were supposed to be. Refreshments were an occasional glass of cold water; in luxurious houses there were water ices and sugared wafers. They complain that we English are not happy in society without eating, and I confess that I prefer a good beefsteak to cold water and water ices.

There was no bad feeling between the Italians and English; they simply ignored one another. Nothing could be shadier than the English colony at Pisa. As they had left England, the farther they were the more wretched they became, till they reached the climax at Naples. They had no club, as at Tours, and they met to read their Gagliani at a grocer's shop on the Lung' Arno. They had their parson and doctor and their tea-caddies, but the inhospitable nature of the country—and certainly Italy is the least given to the savage virtue—seemed to have affected the strangers. Equally unknown were the dinner-parties of Tours and the hops of Blois. No one shot and no one fished. A madman used to plunge through the ice on the Lung' Arno in midwinter, but most of them contented themselves with promenading the Quai and basking in its wintry sun till they returned to their stuffy rooms. A good many of them were half-pay officers. Others were Jamaican planters, men who had made their fortunes in trade; the rest were nondescripts whom nobody knew. At times some frightful scandal broke out in consequence of some gentleman who had left his country for his country's good.

The discomforts of Pisa were considerable. The only fireplace in those days was a kind of brazier, put in the middle of the room. The servants were perfect savages, who had to be taught the very elements of service, and often at the end of the third day a great burly peasant would take leave, saying, "Non mi basta l'anima!" My father started a fearful equipage in the shape of a four-wheeled trap, buying for the same a hammer-headed brute of a horse which at once obtained the name of "Dobbin." Dobbin was a perfect demon steed, and caused incalculable misery, as every person was supposed to steal his oats. One of us boys was sent down to superintend his breakfast, dinner, and supper. On journeys it was the same, and we would have been delighted to see Dobbin hanged, drawn, and quartered. We tried riding him in private, but the brute used to plant his forelegs and kick up and down like a rocking-horse. The trap was another subject of intense misery. The wheels were always supposed to be wanting greasing, and as the natives would steal the grease, it was necessary that one of us should always superintend the greasing. There is no greater mistake than that of trying to make boys useful by making them do servant's work.

The work of education went on nimbly, if not merrily. To former masters was added an Italian master, who was at once dubbed "Signor No," on account of the energy of his negation. The French master unfortunately discovered that his three pupils had poetic talents; the consequence was that we were set to write versical descriptions, which we hated worse than Telemachus and the Spectator.

And a new horror appeared in the shape of a violin master. Edward took kindly to the infliction, worked very hard, and became an amateur almost equal to a professional; was offered fair pay as member of an orchestra in Italy, and kept it up after going into the Army, till the calls of the Mess made it such a nuisance that he gave it up; but took to it again later in life con amore. I always hated my fiddle, and after six months it got me into a terrible scrape, and brought the study to an untimely end. Our professor was a thing like Paganini, length without breadth, nerves without flesh, hung on wires, all hair and no brain, except for fiddling. The creature, tortured to madness by a number of false notes, presently addressed his pupil in his grandiloquent Tuscan manner, "Gli altri scolari sono bestie, ma voi siete un Arci-bestia." The "Arci" offended me horribly, and, in a fury of rage, I broke my violin upon my master's head; and then my father made the discovery that his eldest son had no talent for music, and I was not allowed to learn any more.

Amongst the English at Pisa we met with some Irish cousins, whose names had been Conyngham, but they had, for a fortune, very sensibly added "Jones" to it, and who, very foolishly, were ashamed of it ever after. There was a boy, whose face looked as if badly cut out of a half-boiled potato, dotted with freckles so as to resemble a goose's egg. There was a very pretty girl, who afterwards became Mrs. Seaton. The mother was an exceedingly handsome woman of the Spanish type, and it was grand to see her administering correction to "bouldness." They seemed principally to travel in Italy for the purpose of wearing out old clothes, and afterwards delighted in telling how many churches and palaces they had "done" in Rome per diem. The cute Yankee always travels, when he is quite unknown, in his best bib and tucker, reserving his old clothes for his friends who appreciate him. Altogether the C.J.'s were as fair specimens of Northern barbarians invading the South, as have been seen since the days of Brennus.

Siena.

The summer of '32 was passed at Siena, where a large rambling old house was found inside the walls. The venerable town, whose hospitality was confined to an inscription over the city gate, was perhaps one of the dullest places under heaven. No country in the world shows less hospitality—even Italians amongst themselves—than Italy, and in the case of strangers they have perhaps many reasons to justify their churlishness.

Almost all the English at Siena were fugitives from justice, social or criminal. One man walked off with his friend's wife, another with his purse. There was only one old English lady in the place who was honourable, and that was a Mrs. Russell, who afterwards killed herself with mineral waters. She lived in a pretty little quinta outside the town, where moonlight nights were delightful, and where the nightingales were louder than usual. Beyond this amusement we had little to do, except at times to peep at the gate of Palone, to study very hard, and to hide from the world our suits of nankin. The weary summer drew to a close. The long-surviving chariot was brought out, and then Dobbin, with the "cruelty van," was made ready for the march.

Vetturino-Travelling.

Travelling in vetturino was not without its charm. It much resembled marching in India during the slow old days. It is true you seldom progressed along more than five miles an hour, and uphill at three. Moreover, the harness was perpetually breaking, and at times a horse fell lame; but you saw the country thoroughly, the vetturino knew the name of every house, and you went slowly enough to impress everything upon your memory. The living now was none of the best; food seemed to consist mostly of omelettes and pigeons. The pigeons, it is said, used to desert the dove-cotes every time they saw an English travelling-carriage approaching. And the omelettes showed more hair in them than eggs usually produce. The bread and wine, however, were good, and adulteration was then unknown. The lodging was on a par with the food, and insect powder was not invented or known. Still, taking all in all, it is to be doubted whether we are more comfortable in the Grand Hotel in these days when every hotel is grand, when all mutton is pré salé, when all the beer is bitter, when all the sherry is dry.

It was now resolved to pass the Holy Week at Rome, and the only events of the journey, which went on as usual, were the breaking down of Dobbin's "cruelty van" in a village near Perugia, where the tutor and boys were left behind to look after repairs. We long remembered the peculiar evening which we passed there. The head ostler had informed us that there was an opera, and that he was the primo violino. We went to the big barn, that formed the theatre. A kind of "Passion play" was being performed, with lengthy intervals of music, and all the mysteries of the faith were submitted to the eyes of the faithful. The only disenchanting detail was, that a dove not being procurable, its place was supplied by a turkey-cock, and the awful gabbling of the ill-behaved volatile caused much more merriment than was decorous.

We, who had already examined Voltaire with great interest, were delighted with the old Etruscan city of Perugia, and were allowed a couple of hours' "leave" to visit Pietro di Aretino's tomb, and we loitered by the Lake Thrasimene.

Florence.

The march was short, and the family took a house on the north side of the Arno, near the Boboli Gardens, in Florence. The City of Flowers has always had a reputation beyond what it deserved. Though too fair to be looked upon except upon holidays, it has discomforts of its own. The cold, especially during the Tramontana blowing from the Apennines, is that of Scotland. The heat during the dog-days, when the stone pavements seem to be fit for baking, reminds one of Cairo during a Khamsin, and the rains are at times as heavy and persistent as in Central Africa. The Italians and the English, even in those days, despite all the efforts of the amiable Grand Duke, did not mix well.

Colonies go on as they begin, and the Anglo-Florentine flock certainly has contained, contains, and ever will contain some very black sheep. They were always being divided into cliques. They were perpetually quarrelling. The parson had a terrible life. One of the churchwardens was sure to be some bilious old Indian, and a common character was to be a half-pay Indian officer who had given laws, he said, to millions, who supported himself by gambling, and induced all his cronies to drink hard, the whispered excuse being, that he had shot a man in a duel somewhere. The old ladies were very scandalous. There were perpetual little troubles, like a rich and aged widow being robbed and deserted by her Italian spouse, and resident old gentlemen, when worsted at cards, used to quarrel and call one another liars. Amongst the number was a certain old Dr. Harding who had a large family. His son was sent into the army, and was dreadfully wounded under Sir Charles Napier in Sind. He lived to be Major-General Francis Pim Harding, C.B., and died in 1875.

Another remarkable family was that of old Colonel de Courcy. He had some charming daughters, and I met his son John when he was in the Turkish Contingent and I was Chief of the Staff of Irregular Cavalry in the Crimea.

Still Florence was always Florence. The climate, when it was fine, was magnificent. The views were grand, and the most charming excursions lay within a few hours' walk or drive. The English were well treated, perhaps too well, by the local Government, and the opportunities of studying Art were first-rate. Those wonderful Loggie and the Pitti Palace contained more high Art than is to be found in all London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna put together, and we soon managed to become walking catalogues. A heavy storm, however, presently broke the serenity of the domestic atmosphere at Siena.

Shooting.

We boys had been allowed to begin regular shooting with an old single-barrelled Manton, a hard-hitter which had been changed from flint to percussion. We practised gunnery in secret every moment we could, and presently gave our tutor a specimen of our proficiency. He had been instituting odious comparisons between Edward's length and that of his gun, and went so far as to say that for sixpence he would allow a shot at fifty yards. On this being accepted with the firm determination of peppering him, he thought it better to substitute his hat, and he got away just in time to see it riddled like a sieve. We then began to despise shooting with small shot.

Our parents made a grand mistake about the shooting excursions, especially the mother, who, frightened lest anything should occur, used to get up quarrels to have an excuse to forbid the shooting parties, as punishment. It was soon found out and resented accordingly.

We hoarded the weekly francs which each received, we borrowed Maria's savings, i.e. the poor girl was never allowed to keep it for a day, and invested in what was then known as a "case of pistols." My father—who, when in Sicily with his regiment, had winged a brother-officer, an Irishman, for saying something unpleasant, had carefully and fondly nursed him, and shot him again as soon as ever he recovered, crippling him for life—saw the turn that matters were taking, and ordered the "saw-handles" to be ignominiously returned to the shop. The shock was severe to the pun d'onor of we two Don Quixotes.

I have a most pleasant remembrance of Maria Garcia, a charming young girl, before she became wife and "divine devil" to the old French merchant Morbihan. Both she and her sister (afterwards Madame Viardot) were going through severe training under the old Tartar of a father Garcia, who was, however, a splendid musician and determined to see his girls succeed. They tell me she had spites and rages and that manner of thing in after life, but I can only remember her as worthy of Alfred de Musset's charming stanza.

Rome in Holy Week.

After a slow but most interesting drive we reached the Eternal City, and, like all the world, were immensely impressed by the entrance at the Porto del Popolo. The family secured apartments in the Piazza di Spagna, which was then, as it is now, the capital of English Rome. Everything in it was English, the librarian, the grocer, and all the other little shops, and mighty little it has changed during the third of a century. In 1873, when my wife and I stayed there, the only points of difference observed were the presence of Americans and the large gilded advertisements of the photographers. The sleepy atmosphere was the same, and the same was the drowsy old fountain.

At Rome sight-seeing was carried on with peculiar ardour. With "Mrs. Starke" under the arm, for "Murray" and "Baedeker" were not invented in those days, we young ones went from Vatican to the Capitol, from church to palazzo, from ruin to ruin. We managed to get introductions to the best studios, and made acquaintance with all the shops which contained the best collections of coins, of cameos, of model temples, in rosso-antico, and giallo-antico, and of all the treasures of Roman Art, ancient and modern. We passed our days in running about the town, and whenever we found an opportunity, we made excursions into the country, even ascending Mount Soracte. In those days Rome was not what it is now. It was the ghost of the Imperial City, the mere shadow of the Mistress of the world. The great Forum was a level expanse of ground, out of which the half-buried ruins rose. The Coliseum had not changed for a century. The Palatine hill had never dreamt of excavation. The greater part of the space within the old walls, that represents the ancient City, was a waste, what would in Africa be called bush, and it was believed that turning up the ground caused fatal fevers. It had no pretensions to be a Capital. It wanted fortifications; the walls could be breached with six-pounders. The Tiber was not regulated, and periodically flooded the lower town. The Ghetto was a disgrace. Nothing could be fouler than the Trastevere: and the Leonine City, with the exception of St. Peter's and the Vatican, was a piggery.

At Rome there was then very little society. People met when doing the curiosities, and the principal amusements were conversaziones, when the only conspicuous object was some old Cardinal sitting in red, enthroned upon a sofa. Good old Gregory XVI. did not dislike foreigners, and was even intimate with a certain number of heretics, but that could not disperse the sleepy atmosphere of the place, whilst the classes of society were what the satirical French duchesse called, 'une noblesse de Sacrament'—and yet it was the season of the year. Then, as now, the wandering world pressed to Rome to see ceremonies of the Holy Week, to hear the music of the Sistine Chapel, to assist at the annual conversion of a Jew at St. John of Lateran, to walk gaping about at the interior of St. Peter's, and to enjoy the magnificent illuminations, which were spoiled by a high wind, and a flood of rain. Nothing could be more curious than the contrast between the sons of the Holy City and the barbarians from the North, and the far West, when the Pope stood in the balcony delivering his benediction urbi et orbi; the English and Irish Catholics seemed to be overwhelmed with awe whilst the Romans delivered themselves of small jokes, very audible withal, upon the mien and the demeanor of the Vecchierello. Inside the great cathedral the crowd used to be of the most pushing kind, and young priests attempted to scale one's shoulders. Protestant ladies consumed furtive sandwiches, and here and there an aged sightseer was thrown down and severely trampled upon. In fact, there was a perfect opposition between the occasion of the ceremony and the way it was carried out.

It was necessary to leave Rome in time to reach Naples before the hot season began, and return to summer quarters. In those days the crossing of the Pontine Marshes was considered not a little dangerous. Heavy breakfasts were eaten to avoid the possible effect of malaria upon an empty stomach, and the condemned pistols were ostentatiously loaded to terrify the banditti, who were mostly the servants and hangers-on of the foul little inns.

At Terracina we found an Englishman temporarily under arrest. This was Mr. St. John, who had just shot in a duel Count Controfiani. The history of the latter was not a little curious. He was a red-haired Neapolitan, extremely plain in appearance, and awkward in manner, but touchy and sensitive in the extreme. His friends and his acquaintances chose to make a butt of him, little fancying how things were going to end. One day he took leave of them all, saying that he was going to travel for some years. He disguised himself with a wig, and hid in the suburbs, practising pistol-shooting, foil, and broadsword. When satisfied with his own progress, he reappeared suddenly in society, and was received with a shout of ironical welcome, "Ecco il nostro bel Controfiani." He slapped the face of the ringleader, and in the duel which followed cut him almost to pieces. After two or three affairs of the kind, his reputation was thoroughly made, even in a City where duelling was so common as Naples. At last, by some mischance, he met St. John at Rome, and the two became intimate. They used to practise pistol-shooting together, and popular report declares that both concealed their game. At last a quarrel arose about some young person, and Controfiani was compelled to fight at the pleasure of a member of the Royal family of Naples, of whose suite he was. The duel was to be à la barrière, first shot at twenty-five paces, and leave to advance twelve, after standing the fire. The delay was so great that the seconds began to show signs of impatience, when St. John levelled his pistol, and hit his adversary in the flank, above the hip. Controfiani had the courage to plug his wound with the forefinger of his left hand, and had the folly to attempt advancing, mortally wounded as he was. The movement shook him, his hand was unsteady; his bullet whizzed past St. John's head, and he was dead a few hours later.

The family halted a short while at Capua, then a quiet little country town, equally thoughtless of the honours of the past, or the fierce scenes that waited it in the future; many years afterwards my friend Blakeley of the Guns, and I, offered the Government of King Francis, to go out to rifle the cannon, which was to defend them against Garibaldi and his banditti. Unfortunately the offer came too late, It would have been curious had a couple of Englishmen managed, by shooting Garibaldi, to baffle the plans which Lord Pam. had laid with so much astuteness and perseverance.

Sorrento.

At Naples a house was found upon the Chiaja, and after trying it for a fortnight, and finding it perfectly satisfactory and agreeing to take it for the next season, the family went over to Sorrento. This, in those days, was one of the most pleasant villegiature in Italy. The three little villages that studded the long tongue of rock and fertile soil, were separated from one another by long tracts of orchard and olive ground, instead of being huddled together, as they are now. They preserved all their rural simplicity, baited buffalo-calves in the main squares, and had songs and sayings in order to enrage one another. The villas scattered about the villages were large rambling old shells of houses, and Aunt G. could not open her eyes sufficiently wide when she saw what an Italian villa really was. The bathing was delightful; break-neck paths led down the rocks to little sheltered bays with the yellowest of sands, and the bluest of waters, and old smugglers' caves, which gave the coolest shelter after long dips in the tepid seas. There was an immense variety of excursion. At the root of the tongue arose the Mountain of St. Angelo, where the snow harvest, lasting during summer, was one perpetual merry-making. There were boating trips to Ischia, to Procida, to romantic Capri, with its blue grotto and purple figs, to decayed Salerno, the splendid ruin, and to the temples of Pæstum, more splendid still. The shooting was excellent during the quail season; tall poles and immense nets formed a chevaux de frise on the hilltops, but the boys went to windwards, and shot the birds before they were trapped in the nets, in the usual ignoble way. In fact, nothing could be more pleasant than Sorrento in its old and uncivilized days. Amongst the amusements at Sorrento, we indulged ourselves with creeping over the Natural Arch, simply because the Italians said, "Ma non è possibile, Signorini." It was a dangerous proceeding, as the crumbling stone was ready at every moment to give way.