Читать книгу The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 1, July, 1862 - Various - Страница 6

The Café Greco, like the belle of many seasons, lights up best at night. In morning, in deshabille, not all the venerability of its age can make it respectable. Caper declares that on a fresh, sparkling day, in the merry spring-time, he once really enjoyed a very early breakfast there; and that, with the windows of the Omnibus-room open, the fresh air blowing in, and the sight of a pretty girl at the fourth-story window of a neighboring house, feeding a bird and tending a rose-bush, the old café was rose-colored.

This may be so; but seven o'clock in the evening was the time when the Greco was in its prime. Then the front-room was filled with Germans, the second room with Russians and English, the third room—the Omnibus—with Americans, English, and French, and the fourth, or back-room, was brown with Spaniards. The Italians were there, in one or two rooms, but in a minority; only those who affected the English showed themselves, and aired their knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon tongue and habits.

'I habituate myself,' said a red-haired Italian of the Greco to Caper, 'to the English customs. I myself lave with hot water from foot to head, one time in three weeks, like the English. It is an idea of the most superb, and they tell me I am truly English for so performing. I have not yet arrive to perfection in the lessons of box, but I have a smart cove of a bool-dog.'

Caper told him that his resemblance to an English 'gent' was perfect, at which the Italian, ignorant of the meaning of that fearful word, smiled assent.

The waiter has hardly brought you your small cup of caffe nero, and you are preparing to light a cigar, to smoke while you drink your coffee, when there comes before you a wandering bouquet-seller. It is, perhaps, the dead of winter; long icicles are hanging from fountains, over which hang frosted oranges, frozen myrtles, and frost-nipped olives, Alas! such things are seen in Rome; and yet, for a dime you are offered a bouquet of camellia japonicas. By the way, the name camellia is derived from Camellas, a learned Jesuit; probably La Dame aux Camélias had not a similar origin. You don't want the flowers.

'Signore,' says the man, 'behold a ruined flower-merchant!'

You are unmoved. Have you not seen or heard of, many a time, the heaviest kind of flour-merchants ruined by too heavy speculations, burst up so high the crows couldn't fly to them; and heard this without changing a muscle of your face?

'But, signore, do buy a bouquet to please your lady?'

'Haven't one.'

'Altro!' answers the man, triumphantly, 'whom did I see the other day, with these eyes, (pointing at his own,) in a magnificent carriage, beside the most beautiful Donna Inglesa in Rome? Iddio giusto!'.... At this period, he sees he has made a ten strike, and at once follows it up by knocking down the ten-pin boy, so as to clear the alley, thus: 'For her sake, signore.'

You pay a paul, (and give the bouquet to—your landlady's daughter,) while the departing mercante di fiori assures you that he never, no, never expects to make a fortune at flowers; but if he gains enough to pay for his wine, he will be very tipsy as long as he lives!

Then comes an old man, with a chessboard of inlaid stone, which he hasn't an idea of selling; but finds it excellent to 'move on,' without being checkmated as a beggar without visible means of s'port. The first time he brought it round, and held it out square to Caper, that cool young man, taking a handful of coppers from his pocket, arranged them as checkers on the board, without taking any notice of the man; and after he had placed them, began playing deliberately. He rested his chin on his hand, and with knitted brows, studied several intricate moves; he finally jumped the men, so as to leave a copper or two on the board; and bidding the old man good-night, continued a conversation with Rocjean, commenced previous to his game of draughts.

Next approaches a hardware—merchant, for, in Imperial Rome, the peddler of a colder clime is a merchant, the shoemaker an artist, the artist a professor. The hardware-man looks as if he might be 'touter' to a broken-down brigand. All the razors in his box couldn't keep the small part of his face that is shaved from wearing a look as if it had been blown up with gunpowder, while the grains had remained embedded there. He tempts you with a wicked-looking knife, the pattern for which must have come from the litreus of Etruria, the land called the mother of superstitions, and have been wielded for auguries amid the howls and groans of lucomones and priests. He tells you it is a Campagna-knife, and that you must have one if you go into that benighted region; he says this with a mysterious shake of his head, as if he had known Fra Diavolo in his childhood and Fra 'Tonelli in his riper years. The crescent-shaped handle is of black bone; the pointed blade long and tapering; the three notches in its back catch into the spring with a noise like the alarum of a rattle-snake. You conclude to buy one—for a curiosity. You ask why the blade at the point finishes off in a circle? He tells you the government forbids the sale of sharp-pointed knives; but, signore, if you wish to use it, break off the circle under your heel, and you have a point sharp enough to make any man have an accidente di freddo, (death from cold—steel.)

Victor Hugo might have taken his character of Quasimodo from the wild figure who now enters the Greco, with a pair of horns for sale; each horn is nearly a yard in length, black and white in color; they have been polished by the hunchback until they shine like glass. Now he approaches you, and with deep, rough voice, reminding you of the lowing of the large grey oxen they once belonged to, begs you to buy them. Then he facetiously raises one to each side of his head, and you have a figure that Jerome Bosch would have rejoiced to transfer to canvas. His portrait has been painted by more than one artist.

Caper, sitting in the Omnibus one evening with Rocjean, was accosted by a very seedy-looking man, with a very peculiar expression of face, wherein an awful struggle of humor to crowd down pinching poverty gleamed brightly. He offered for sale an odd volume of one of the early fathers of the Church. Its probable value was a dime, whereas he wanted two dollars for it.

'Why do you ask such a price?' asked Rocjean, 'you never can expect to sell it for a twentieth part of that.'

'The moral of which,' said the seedy man, no longer containing the struggling humor, but letting it out with a hearty laugh; 'the moral of which is—give me half a baioccho!'

Ever after that, Caper never saw the man, who henceforth went by the name of La Morale é un Mezzo Baioccho! without pointing the moral with a copper coin. Not content with this, he once took him round to the Lepre restaurant, and ordered a right good supper for him. Several other artists were with him, and all declared that no one could do better justice to food and wine. After he had eaten all he could hold, and drank a little more than he could carry, he arose from table, having during the entire meal sensibly kept silence, and wiping his mouth on his coat-sleeve, spoke:

'The moral this evening, signori, I shall carry home in my stomach.'

As he was going out of the restaurant, one of the artists asked him why he left two rolls of bread on the table; saying they were paid for, and belonged to him.

'I left them,' said he, 'out of regard for the correct usages of society; but, having shown this, I return to pocket them.'

This he did at once, and Caper stood astonished at the seedy-beggar's phraseology.

In addition to these characters, wandering musicians find their way into the café, jugglers, peddlers of Roman mosaics and jewelry, plaster-casts and sponges, perfumery and paint-brushes. Or a peripatetic shoemaker, with one pair of shoes, which he recklessly offers for sale to giant or dwarf. One morning he found a purchaser—a French artist—who put them on, and threw away his old shoes. Fatal mistake. Two hours afterward, the buyer was back in the Greco, with both big toes sticking out of the ends of his new shoes, looking for that cochon of a shoemaker.

To those who read men like books, the Greco offers a valuable circulating library. The advantage, too, of these artistical works is, that one needs not be a Mezzofanti to read the Russian, Spanish, German, French, Italian, English, and other faces that pass before one panoramically. There sits a relation of a hospodar, drinking Russian tea; he pours into a large cup a small glass of brandy, throws in a slice of lemon, fills up with hot tea. Do you think of the miles he has traveled, in a telega, over snow-covered steppes, and the smoking samovar of tea that awaited him, his journey for the day ended? Had he lived when painting and sculpture were in their ripe prime, what a fiery life he would have thrown into his works! As it is, he drinks cognac, hunts wild-boars in the Pontine marshes—and paints Samson and Delilah, after models.

The Spanish artist, over a cup of chocolate, has lovely dreams, of burnt umber hue, and despises the neglected treasures left him by the Moors, while he seeks gold in—castles in the air.

The German, with feet in Italy and head far away in the Fatherland, frequents the German-club in preference to the Greco; for at the club is there not lager beer?.... In imperial Rome, there are lager beer breweries! He has the profundities of the esthetical in art at his finger-ends; it is deep-sea fishing, and he occasionally lands a whale, as Kaulbach has done; or very nearly catches a mermaid with Cornelius. Let us respect the man—he works.

The French artist, over a cup of black coffee, with perhaps a small glass of cognac, is the lightning to the German thunder. If he were asked to paint the portrait of a potato, he would make eyes about it, and then give you a little picture fit to adorn a boudoir. He does every thing with a flourish. If he has never painted Nero performing that celebrated violin-solo over Rome, it is because he despaired of conveying an idea of the tremulous flourish of the fiddle-bow. He reads nature, and translates her, without understanding her. He will prove to you that the cattle of Rosa Bonheur are those of the fields, while he will object to Landseer that his beasts are those of the guinea cattle-show. He blows up grand facts in the science of art with gunpowder, while the English dig them out with a shovel, and the Germans bore for them. He finds Raphael, king of pastel artists, and never mentions his discovery to the English. He is more dangerous with the fleurette than many a trooper with broadsword. Every thing that he appropriates, he stamps with the character of his own nationality. The English race-horse at Chantilly has an air of curl-papers about his mane and tail.

The Italian artist—the night-season is for sleep.

The English artist—hearken to Ruskin on Turner! When one has hit the bull's-eye, there is nothing left but to lay down the gun, and go and have—a whitebait dinner.

The American artist—there is danger of the youthful giant kicking out the end of the Cradle of Art, and 'scatterlophisticating rampageously' over all the nursery.

'I'd jest give a hun-dred dol-lars t'morrow, ef I could find out a way to cut stat-tures by steam,' said Chapin, the sculptor.

'I can't see why a country with great rivers, great mountains, and great institutions generally, can not produce great sculptors and painters,' said Caper sharply, one day to Rocjean.

'It is this very greatness,' answered Rocjean, 'that prevents it. The aim of the people runs not in the narrow channel of mountain-stream, but with the broad tide of the ocean. In the hands of Providence, other lands in other times have taken up painting and sculpture with their whole might, and have wielded them to advance civilization. They have played—are playing their part, these civilizers; but they are no longer chief actors, least of all in America. Painting and sculpture may take the character of subjects there; but their rôle as king is—played out.'

'Much as you know about it,' answered Caper, 'you are all theory!'

'That maybe,' quoth Rocjean; 'you know what ΘΕΟΣ means in Greek, don't you?'