Thus it floated me away, until I awoke in the old market-place at
Verona. I have, many and many a time, thought since, of this
strange Dream upon the water: half-wondering if it lie there yet,
and if its name be VENICE.
CHAPTER VIII - BY VERONA, MANTUA, AND MILAN, ACROSS THE PASS OF THE
SIMPLON INTO SWITZERLAND
I HAD been half afraid to go to Verona, lest it should at all put
me out of conceit with Romeo and Juliet. But, I was no sooner come
into the old market-place, than the misgiving vanished. It is so
fanciful, quaint, and picturesque a place, formed by such an
extraordinary and rich variety of fantastic buildings, that there
could be nothing better at the core of even this romantic town:
scene of one of the most romantic and beautiful of stories.
It was natural enough, to go straight from the Market-place, to the
House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most miserable little
inn. Noisy vetturini and muddy market-carts were disputing
possession of the yard, which was ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood
of splashed and bespattered geese; and there was a grim-visaged
dog, viciously panting in a doorway, who would certainly have had
Romeo by the leg, the moment he put it over the wall, if he had
existed and been at large in those times. The orchard fell into
other hands, and was parted off many years ago; but there used to
be one attached to the house - or at all events there may have,
been, - and the hat (Cappello) the ancient cognizance of the
family, may still be seen, carved in stone, over the gateway of the
yard. The geese, the market-carts, their drivers, and the dog,
were somewhat in the way of the story, it must be confessed; and it
would have been pleasanter to have found the house empty, and to
have been able to walk through the disused rooms. But the hat was
unspeakably comfortable; and the place where the garden used to be,
hardly less so. Besides, the house is a distrustful, jealouslooking
house as one would desire to see, though of a very moderate
size. So I was quite satisfied with it, as the veritable mansion
of old Capulet, and was correspondingly grateful in my
acknowledgments to an extremely unsentimental middle-aged lady, the
Padrona of the Hotel, who was lounging on the threshold looking at
the geese; and who at least resembled the Capulets in the one
particular of being very great indeed in the 'Family' way.
From Juliet's home, to Juliet's tomb, is a transition as natural to
the visitor, as to fair Juliet herself, or to the proudest Juliet
that ever has taught the torches to burn bright in any time. So, I
went off, with a guide, to an old, old garden, once belonging to an
old, old convent, I suppose; and being admitted, at a shattered
gate, by a bright-eyed woman who was washing clothes, went down
some walks where fresh plants and young flowers were prettily
growing among fragments of old wall, and ivy-coloured mounds; and
was shown a little tank, or water-trough, which the bright-eyed
woman - drying her arms upon her 'kerchief, called 'La tomba di
Giulietta la sfortunata.' With the best disposition in the world
to believe, I could do no more than believe that the bright-eyed
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woman believed; so I gave her that much credit, and her customary
fee in ready money. It was a pleasure, rather than a
disappointment, that Juliet's resting-place was forgotten. However
consolatory it may have been to Yorick's Ghost, to hear the feet
upon the pavement overhead, and, twenty times a day, the repetition
of his name, it is better for Juliet to lie out of the track of
tourists, and to have no visitors but such as come to graves in
spring-rain, and sweet air, and sunshine.
Pleasant Verona! With its beautiful old palaces, and charming
country in the distance, seen from terrace walks, and stately,
balustraded galleries. With its Roman gates, still spanning the
fair street, and casting, on the sunlight of to-day, the shade of
fifteen hundred years ago. With its marble-fitted churches, lofty
towers, rich architecture, and quaint old quiet thoroughfares,
where shouts of Montagues and Capulets once resounded,
And made Verona's ancient citizens
Cast by their grave, beseeming ornaments,
To wield old partizans.
waving cypresses, and prospect so delightful, and so cheerful!
Pleasant Verona!
In the midst of it, in the Piazza di Bra - a spirit of old time
among the familiar realities of the passing hour - is the great
Roman Amphitheatre. So well preserved, and carefully maintained,
that every row of seats is there, unbroken. Over certain of the
arches, the old Roman numerals may yet be seen; and there are
corridors, and staircases, and subterranean passages for beasts,
and winding ways, above ground and below, as when the fierce
thousands hurried in and out, intent upon the bloody shows of the
arena. Nestling in some of the shadows and hollow places of the
walls, now, are smiths with their forges, and a few small dealers
of one kind or other; and there are green weeds, and leaves, and
grass, upon the parapet. But little else is greatly changed.
When I had traversed all about it, with great interest, and had
gone up to the topmost round of seats, and turning from the lovely
panorama closed in by the distant Alps, looked down into the
building, it seemed to lie before me like the inside of a
prodigious hat of plaited straw, with an enormously broad brim and
a shallow crown; the plaits being represented by the four-and-forty
rows of seats. The comparison is a homely and fantastic one, in
sober remembrance and on paper, but it was irresistibly suggested
at the moment, nevertheless.
An equestrian troop had been there, a short time before - the same
troop, I dare say, that appeared to the old lady in the church at
Modena - and had scooped out a little ring at one end of the area;
where their performances had taken place, and where the marks of
their horses' feet were still fresh. I could not but picture to
myself, a handful of spectators gathered together on one or two of
the old stone seats, and a spangled Cavalier being gallant, or a
Policinello funny, with the grim walls looking on. Above all, I
thought how strangely those Roman mutes would gaze upon the
favourite comic scene of the travelling English, where a British
nobleman (Lord John), with a very loose stomach: dressed in a
blue-tailed coat down to his heels, bright yellow breeches, and a
white hat: comes abroad, riding double on a rearing horse, with an
English lady (Lady Betsy) in a straw bonnet and green veil, and a
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red spencer; and who always carries a gigantic reticule, and a putup
parasol.
I walked through and through the town all the rest of the day, and
could have walked there until now, I t
hink. In one place, there
was a very pretty modern theatre, where they had just performed the
opera (always popular in Verona) of Romeo and Juliet. In another
there was a collection, under a colonnade, of Greek, Roman, and
Etruscan remains, presided over by an ancient man who might have
been an Etruscan relic himself; for he was not strong enough to
open the iron gate, when he had unlocked it, and had neither voice
enough to be audible when he described the curiosities, nor sight
enough to see them: he was so very old. In another place, there
was a gallery of pictures: so abominably bad, that it was quite
delightful to see them mouldering away. But anywhere: in the
churches, among the palaces, in the streets, on the bridge, or down
beside the river: it was always pleasant Verona, and in my
remembrance always will be.
I read Romeo and Juliet in my own room at the inn that night - of
course, no Englishman had ever read it there, before - and set out
for Mantua next day at sunrise, repeating to myself (in the COUPE
of an omnibus, and next to the conductor, who was reading the
Mysteries of Paris),
There is no world without Verona's walls
But purgatory, torture, hell itself.
Hence-banished is banished from the world,
And world's exile is death -
which reminded me that Romeo was only banished five-and-twenty
miles after all, and rather disturbed my confidence in his energy
and boldness.
Was the way to Mantua as beautiful, in his time, I wonder! Did it
wind through pasture land as green, bright with the same glancing
streams, and dotted with fresh clumps of graceful trees! Those
purple mountains lay on the horizon, then, for certain; and the
dresses of these peasant girls, who wear a great, knobbed, silver
pin like an English 'life-preserver' through their hair behind, can
hardly be much changed. The hopeful feeling of so bright a
morning, and so exquisite a sunrise, can have been no stranger,
even to an exiled lover's breast; and Mantua itself must have
broken on him in the prospect, with its towers, and walls, and
water, pretty much as on a common-place and matrimonial omnibus.
He made the same sharp twists and turns, perhaps, over two rumbling
drawbridges; passed through the like long, covered, wooden bridge;
and leaving the marshy water behind, approached the rusty gate of
stagnant Mantua.
If ever a man were suited to his place of residence, and his place
of residence to him, the lean Apothecary and Mantua came together
in a perfect fitness of things. It may have been more stirring
then, perhaps. If so, the Apothecary was a man in advance of his
time, and knew what Mantua would be, in eighteen hundred and fortyfour.
He fasted much, and that assisted him in his foreknowledge.
I put up at the Hotel of the Golden Lion, and was in my own room
arranging plans with the brave Courier, when there came a modest
little tap at the door, which opened on an outer gallery
surrounding a court-yard; and an intensely shabby little man looked
in, to inquire if the gentleman would have a Cicerone to show the
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town. His face was so very wistful and anxious, in the half-opened
doorway, and there was so much poverty expressed in his faded suit
and little pinched hat, and in the thread-bare worsted glove with
which he held it - not expressed the less, because these were
evidently his genteel clothes, hastily slipped on - that I would as
soon have trodden on him as dismissed him. I engaged him on the
instant, and he stepped in directly.
While I finished the discussion in which I was engaged, he stood,
beaming by himself in a corner, making a feint of brushing my hat
with his arm. If his fee had been as many napoleons as it was
francs, there could not have shot over the twilight of his
shabbiness such a gleam of sun, as lighted up the whole man, now
that he was hired.
'Well!' said I, when I was ready, 'shall we go out now?'
'If the gentleman pleases. It is a beautiful day. A little fresh,
but charming; altogether charming. The gentleman will allow me to
open the door. This is the Inn Yard. The court-yard of the Golden
Lion! The gentleman will please to mind his footing on the
stairs.'
We were now in the street.
'This is the street of the Golden Lion. This, the outside of the
Golden Lion. The interesting window up there, on the first Piano,
where the pane of glass is broken, is the window of the gentleman's
chamber!'
Having viewed all these remarkable objects, I inquired if there
were much to see in Mantua.
'Well! Truly, no. Not much! So, so,' he said, shrugging his
shoulders apologetically.
'Many churches?'
'No. Nearly all suppressed by the French.'
'Monasteries or convents?'
'No. The French again! Nearly all suppressed by Napoleon.'
'Much business?'
'Very little business.'
'Many strangers?'
'Ah Heaven!'
I thought he would have fainted.
'Then, when we have seen the two large churches yonder, what shall
we do next?' said I.
He looked up the street, and down the street, and rubbed his chin
timidly; and then said, glancing in my face as if a light had
broken on his mind, yet with a humble appeal to my forbearance that
was perfectly irresistible:
'We can take a little turn about the town, Signore!' (Si puo far
'un piccolo giro della citta).
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It was impossible to be anything but delighted with the proposal,
so we set off together in great good-humour. In the relief of his
mind, he opened his heart, and gave up as much of Mantua as a
Cicerone could.
'One must eat,' he said; 'but, bah! it was a dull place, without
doubt!'
He made as much as possible of the Basilica of Santa Andrea - a
noble church - and of an inclosed portion of the pavement, about
which tapers were burning, and a few people kneeling, and under
which is said to be preserved the Sangreal of the old Romances.
This church disposed of, and another after it (the cathedral of San
Pietro), we went to the Museum, which was shut up. 'It was all the
same,' he said. 'Bah! There was not much inside!' Then, we went
to see the Piazza del Diavolo, built by the Devil (for no
particular purpose) in a single night; then, the Piazza Virgiliana;
then, the statue of Virgil - OUR Poet, my little friend said,
plucking up a spirit, for the moment, and putting his hat a little
on one side. Then, we went to a dismal sort of farm-yard, by which
a picture-gallery was approached. The moment the gate of this
retreat was opened, some five hundred geese came waddling round us,
stretching out their necks, and clamouring in the most hideous
manner, as if they were ejaculating, 'Oh! here's somebody come to
see the Pictures! Don't go up! Don't go up!
' While we went up,
they waited very quietly about the door in a crowd, cackling to one
another occasionally, in a subdued tone; but the instant we
appeared again, their necks came out like telescopes, and setting
up a great noise, which meant, I have no doubt, 'What, you would
go, would you! What do you think of it! How do you like it!' they
attended us to the outer gate, and cast us forth, derisively, into
Mantua.
The geese who saved the Capitol, were, as compared to these, Pork
to the learned Pig. What a gallery it was! I would take their
opinion on a question of art, in preference to the discourses of
Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Now that we were standing in the street, after being thus
ignominiouly escorted thither, my little friend was plainly reduced
to the 'piccolo giro,' or little circuit of the town, he had
formerly proposed. But my suggestion that we should visit the
Palazzo Te (of which I had heard a great deal, as a strange wild
place) imparted new life to him, and away we went.
The secret of the length of Midas's ears, would have been more
extensively known, if that servant of his, who whispered it to the
reeds, had lived in Mantua, where there are reeds and rushes enough
to have published it to all the world. The Palazzo Te stands in a
swamp, among this sort of vegetation; and is, indeed, as singular a
place as I ever saw.
Not for its dreariness, though it is very dreary. Not for its
dampness, though it is very damp. Nor for its desolate condition,
though it is as desolate and neglected as house can be. But
chiefly for the unaccountable nightmares with which its interior
has been decorated (among other subjects of more delicate
execution), by Giulio Romano. There is a leering Giant over a
certain chimney-piece, and there are dozens of Giants (Titans
warring with Jove) on the walls of another room, so inconceivably
ugly and grotesque, that it is marvellous how any man can have
imagined such creatures. In the chamber in which they abound,
these monsters, with swollen faces and cracked cheeks, and every
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kind of distortion of look and limb, are depicted as staggering
under the weight of falling buildings, and being overwhelmed in the
ruins; upheaving masses of rock, and burying themselves beneath;
vainly striving to sustain the pillars of heavy roofs that topple