CHAPTER XXXI
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME
AS we approached Rome in the darkness I was on the qui vive for my first glimpse of it; and impatient with wonder as to what the morning would reveal. I was bound for the Hotel Continental—the abode, for the winter at least, of Barfleur’s mother, the widow of an Oxford don. I expected to encounter a severe and conservative lady of great erudition who would eye the foibles of Paris and Monte Carlo with severity.
“My mother,” Barfleur said, “is a very conservative person. She is greatly concerned about me. When you see her, try to cheer her up, and give her a good report of me. I don’t doubt you will find her very interesting; and it is just possible that she will take a fancy to you. She is subject to violent likes and dislikes.”
I fancied Mrs. Barfleur as a rather large woman with a smooth placid countenance, a severe intellectual eye that would see through all my shams and make-believes on the instant.
It was midnight before the train arrived. It was raining; and as I pressed my nose to the window-pane viewing the beginning lamps, I saw streets and houses come into view—apartment houses, if you please, and street cars and electric arc-lights, and asphalt-paved streets, and a general atmosphere of modernity. We might have been entering Cleveland for any particular variation it presented. But just when I was commenting to myself on the strangeness of entering ancient Rome in a modern compartment car and of seeing box cars and engines, coal cars and flat cars loaded with heavy material, gathered on a score of parallel tracks, a touch of the ancient Rome came into view for an instant and was gone again in the dark and rain. It was an immense, desolate tomb, its arches flung heavenward in great curves, its rounded dome rent and jagged by time. Nothing but ancient Rome could have produced so imposing a ruin and it came over me in an instant, fresh and clear like an electric shock, like a dash of cold water, that this was truly all that was left of the might and glory of an older day. I recall now with delight the richness of that sensation. Rome that could build the walls and the baths in far Manchester and London, Rome that could occupy the Ile-St.-Louis in Paris as an outpost, that could erect the immense column to Augustus on the heights above Monte Carlo, Rome that could reach to the uppermost waters of the Nile and the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates and rule, was around me. Here it was—the city to which St. Paul had been brought, where St. Peter had sat as the first father of the Church, where the first Latins had set up their shrine to Romulus and Remus, and worshiped the she-wolf that had nourished them. Yes, this was Rome, truly enough, in spite of the apartment houses and the street cars and the electric lights. I came into the great station at five minutes after twelve amid a clamor of Italian porters and a crowd of disembarking passengers. I made my way to the baggage-room, looking for a Cook’s guide to inquire my way to the Continental, when I was seized upon by one.
“Are you Mr. Dreiser?” he said.
I replied that I was.
“Mrs. Barfleur told me to say that she was waiting for you and that you should come right over and inquire for her.”
I hurried away, followed by a laboring porter, and found her waiting for me in the hotel lobby,—not the large, severe person I had imagined, but a small, enthusiastic, gracious little lady. She told me that my room was all ready and that the bath that I had demanded was connected with it, and that she had ordered some coffee sent up, but that I could have anything else that I chose. She began with a flood of questions—how was her poor dear son, and her daughter in London? And had we lost much money at Monte Carlo? And had we been very nice and quiet in Paris? And had I had a pleasant trip? And was it very cold in Paris? And would I like to go with her here and there for a few days, particularly until I was acclimated and able to find my own way about? I answered her freely and rapidly, for I took a real liking to her and decided at once that I was going to have a very nice time—she was so motherly and friendly. It struck me as delightful that she should wait up for me, and see that I was welcomed and comfortably housed; I can see her now with a loving memory in her charming gray silk dress and black lace shawl.
The first morning I arose in Rome it was raining; but to my joy, in an hour or two the sun came out and I saw a very peculiar city. Rome has about the climate of Monte Carlo, except that it is a little more changeable, and in the mornings and evenings quite chill. Around noon every day it was very warm—almost invariably bright, deliciously bright; but dark and cool where the buildings or the trees cast a shadow. I was awakened by huzzaing which I learned afterwards was for some officer who had lately returned from Morocco.
Like the English, the Italians are not yet intimately acquainted with the bathroom, and this particular hotel reminded me of the one in Manchester with its bath chambers as large as ordinary living-rooms. My room looked out into an inner court, which was superimposed upon the lobby of the hotel, and was set with palms and flowers which flourished mightily. I looked out through an opening in this court to some brown buildings over the way—brown as only the Italians know how to paint them, and bustling with Italian life.
Mrs. Barfleur had kindly volunteered to show me about this first day, and I was to meet her promptly at ten in the lobby. She wanted me to take a street car to begin with, because there was one that went direct to St. Peter’s along the Via Nazionale, and because there were so many things she could show me that way. We went out into the public square which adjoined the hotel and there it was that she pointed out the Museo delle Terme, located in the ancient baths of Diocletian, and assured me that the fragments of wall that I saw jutting out from between buildings in one or two places dated from the Roman Empire. The fragment of the wall of Servius Tullius which we encountered in the Via Nazionale dates from 578 B. C., and the baths of Diocletian, so close to the hotel, from 303 A. D. The large ruin that I had seen the night before on entering the city was a temple to Minerva Medica, dating from about 250 A. D. I shall never forget my sensation on seeing modern stores—drug stores, tobacco stores, book stores, all with bright clean windows, adjoining these very ancient ruins. It was something for the first time to see a fresh, well-dressed modern throng going about its morning’s business amid these rude suggestions of a very ancient life.
Nearly all the traces of ancient Rome, however, were apparently obliterated, and you saw only busy, up-to-date thoroughfares, with street cars, shops, and a gay metropolitan life generally. I have to smile when I think that I mistook a section of the old wall of Servius Tullius for the remnants of a warehouse which had recently been removed. All the time in Rome I kept suffering this impression—that I was looking at something which had only recently been torn down, when as a matter of fact I was looking at the earlier or later walls of the ancient city or the remnants of famous temples and baths. This particular street car line on which we were riding was a revelation in its way, for it was full of black-frocked priests in shovel hats, monks in brown cowls and sandals, and Americans and English old maids in spectacles who carried their Baedekers with severe primness and who were, like ourselves, bound for the Vatican. The conductors, it struck me, were a trifle more civil than the American brand, but not much; and the native passengers were a better type of Italian than we usually see in America. I sighted the Italian policeman at different points along the way—not unlike the Parisian gendarme in his high cap and short cape. The most striking characteristic, however, was the great number of priests and soldiers who were much more numerous than policemen and taxi drivers in New York. It seemed to me that on this very first morning I saw bands of priests going to and fro in all directions, but, for the rest of it, Rome was not unlike Monte Carlo and Paris combined, only that its streets were comparatively narrow and its colors high.
Mrs. Barfleur was most kindly and industrious in her explanations. She told me that in riding down this Via Nazionale we were passing between those ancient hills, the Quirinale and the Viminale, by the Forum of Trajan, the Gallery of Modern Art, the palaces of the Aldobrandini and Rospigliosi, and a score of other things which I have forgotten. When we reached the open square which faces St. Peter’s, I expected to be vastly impressed by my first glimpse of the first Roman Church of the world; but in a way I was very much disappointed. To me it was not in the least beautiful, as Canterbury was beautiful, as Amiens was beautiful, and as Pisa was beautiful. I was not at all enthusiastic over the semicircular arcade in front with its immense columns. I knew that I ought to think it was wonderful, but I could not. I think in a way that the location and arrangement of the building does not do it justice, and it has neither the somber gray of Amiens nor the delicate creamy hue of the buildings of Pisa. It is brownish and gray by turns. As I drove nearer I realized that it was very large—astonishingly large—and that by some hocus-pocus of perspective and arrangement this was not easily realizable. I was eager to see its interior, however, and waived all exterior consideration until later.
As we were first going up the steps of St. Peter’s and across the immense stone platform that leads to the door, a small Italian wedding-party arrived, without any design of being married there, however; merely to visit the various shrines and altars. The gentleman was somewhat self-conscious in a long black frock coat and high hat—a little, brown, mustached, dapper man whose patent leather shoes sparkled in the sun. The lady was a rosy Italian girl, very much belaced and besilked, with a pert, practical air; a little velvet-clad page carried her train. There were a number of friends—the parents on both sides, I took it—and some immediate relatives who fell solemnly in behind, two by two; and together this little ant-like band crossed the immense threshold. Mrs. Barfleur and I followed eagerly after—or at least I did, for I fancied they were to be married here and I wanted to see how it was to be done at St. Peter’s. I was disappointed, however; for they merely went from altar to altar and shrine to shrine, genuflecting, and finally entered the sacred crypt, below which the bones of St. Peter are supposed to be buried. It was a fine religious beginning to what I trust has proved a happy union.
St. Peter’s, if I may be permitted to continue a little on that curious theme, is certainly the most amazing church in the world. It is not beautiful—I am satisfied that no true artist would grant that; but after you have been all over Europe and have seen the various edifices of importance, it still sticks in your mind as astounding, perhaps the most astounding of all. While I was in Rome I learned by consulting guide-books, attending lectures and visiting the place myself, that it is nothing more than a hodge-podge of the vagaries and enthusiasms of a long line of able pontiffs. To me the Catholic Church has such a long and messy history of intrigue and chicanery that I for one cannot contemplate its central religious pretensions with any peace of mind. I am not going into the history of the papacy, nor the internecine and fratricidal struggles of medieval Italy; but what veriest tyro does not grasp the significance of what I mean? Julius II, flanking a Greek-cross basilica with a hexastyle portico to replace the Constantinian basilica, which itself had replaced the oratory of St. Anacletus on this spot, and that largely to make room for his famous tomb which was to be the finest thing in it; Urban VIII melting down the copper roof of the Panthéon portico in order to erect the showy baldachino! I do not now recall what ancient temples were looted for marble nor what popes did the looting, but that it was plentifully done I am satisfied and Van Ranke will bear me out. It was Julius II and Leo X who resorted to the sale of indulgences, which aided in bringing about the Reformation, for the purpose of paying the enormous expenses connected with the building of this lavish structure. Think of how the plans of Bramante and Michelangelo and Raphael and Carlo Maderna were tossed about between the Latin cross and the Greek cross and between a portico of one form and a portico of another form! Wars, heartaches, struggles, contentions—these are they of which St. Peter’s is a memorial. As I looked at the amazing length—six hundred and fifteen feet—and the height of the nave—one hundred and fifty-two feet—and the height of the dome from the pavement in the interior to the roof—four hundred and five feet—and saw that the church actually contained forty-six immense altars and read that it contained seven hundred and forty-eight columns of marble, stone or bronze, three hundred and eighty-six statues and two hundred and ninety windows, I began to realize how astounding the whole thing was. It was really so large, and so tangled historically, and so complicated in the history of its architectural development, that it was useless for me to attempt to synchronize its significance in my mind. I merely stared, staggered by the great beauty and value of the immense windows, the showy and astounding altars. I came back again and again; but I got nothing save an unutterable impression of overwhelming grandeur. It is far too rich in its composition for mortal conception. No one, I am satisfied, truly completely realizes how grand it is. It answers to that word exactly. Browning’s poem, “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s,” gives a faint suggestion of what any least bit of it is like. Any single tomb of any single pope—of which it seemed to me there were no end—might have had this poem written about it. Each one appears to have desired a finer tomb than the other; and I can understand the eager enthusiasm of Sixtus V (1588), who kept eight hundred men working night and day on the dome in order to see how it was going to look. And well he might. Murray tells the story of how on one occasion, being in want of another receptacle for water, the masons tossed the body of Urban VI out of his sarcophagus, put aside his bones in a corner, and gave the ring on his finger to the architect. The pope’s remains were out of their receptacle for fifteen years or more before they were finally restored.
The Vatican sculptural and art museums were equally astonishing. I had always heard of its eleven hundred rooms and its priceless collections; but it was thrilling and delightful to see them face to face, all the long line of Greek and Roman and medieval perfections, chiseled or painted, transported from ruins or dug from the earth—such wonders as the porphyry vase and Laocoon, taken from the silent underground rooms of Nero’s house, where they had stood for centuries, unheeded, in all their perfection; and the river god, representative of the Tiber. I was especially interested to see the vast number of portrait busts of Roman personalities—known and unknown—which gave me a face-to-face understanding of that astounding people. They came back now or arose vital before me—Claudius, Nerva, Hadrian, Faustina the elder, wife of Antoninus Pius, Pertinax, whose birthplace was near Monte Carlo, Julius Cæsar, Cicero, Antoninus Pius, Tiberius, Mark Antony, Aurelius Lepidus, and a score of others. It was amazing to me to see how like the modern English and Americans they were, and how practical and present-day-like they appeared. It swept away the space of two thousand years as having no significance whatever, and left you face to face with the far older problem of humanity. I could not help thinking that the duplicates of these men are on our streets to-day in New York and Chicago and London—urgent, calculating, thinking figures—and that they are doing to-day much as these forerunners did two thousand years before. I cannot see the slightest difference between an emperor like Hadrian and a banker like Morgan. And the head of a man like Lord Salisbury is to be found duplicated in a score of sculptures in various museums throughout the Holy City. I realized, too, that any one of hundreds of these splendid marbles, if separated from their populous surroundings and given to a separate city, meager in artistic possessions, would prove a great public attraction. To him that hath shall be given, however; and to those that have not shall be taken away even the little that they have. And so it is that Rome fairly suffocates with its endless variety of artistic perfection—one glory almost dimming the other—while the rest of the world yearns for a crust of artistic beauty and has nothing. It is like the Milky Way for jewels as contrasted with those vast starless spaces that give no evidence of sidereal life.
I wandered in this region of wonders attended by my motherly friend until it was late in the afternoon, and then we went for lunch. Being new to Rome, I was not satisfied with what I had seen, but struck forth again—coming next into the region of Santa Maria Maggiore and up an old stairway that had formed a part of a Medici palace now dismantled—only to find myself shortly thereafter and quite by accident in the vicinity of the Colosseum. I really had not known that I was coming to it, for I was not looking for it. I was following idly the lines of an old wall that lay in the vicinity of San Pietro in Vincoli when suddenly it appeared, lying in a hollow at the foot of a hill—the Esquiline. I was rejoicing in having discovered an old well that I knew must be of very ancient date, and a group of cypresses that showed over an ancient wall, when I looked—and there it was. It was exactly as the pictures have represented it—oval, many-arched, a thoroughly ponderous ruin. I really did not gain a suggestion of the astonishing size of it until I came down the hill, past tin cans that were lying on the grass—a sign of the modernity that possesses Rome—and entered through one of the many arches. Then it came on me—the amazing thickness of the walls, the imposing size and weight of the fragments, the vast dignity of the uprising flights of seats, and the great space now properly cleared, devoted to the arena. All that I ever knew or heard of it came back as I sat on the cool stones and looked about me while other tourists walked leisurely about, their Baedekers in their hands. It was a splendid afternoon. The sun was shining down in here; and it was as warm as though it were May in Indiana. Small patches of grass and moss were detectable everywhere, growing soft and green between the stones. The five thousand wild beasts slaughtered in the arena at its dedication, which remained as a thought from my high-school days, were all with me. I read up as much as I could, watching several workmen lowering themselves by ropes from the top of the walls, the while they picked out little tufts of grass and weeds beginning to flourish in the earthy niches. Its amazing transformations from being a quarry for greedy popes by whom most of its magnificent marbles were removed, to its narrow escape from becoming a woolen-mill operated by Sixtus V, were all brooded over here. It was impossible not to be impressed by the thought of the emperors sitting on their especial balcony; the thousands upon thousands of Romans intent upon some gladiatorial feat; the guards outside the endless doors, the numbers of which can still be seen, giving entrance to separate sections and tiers of seats; and the vast array of civic life which must have surged about. I wondered whether there were venders who sold sweets or food and what their cries were in Latin. One could think of the endless procession that wound its way here on gala days. Time works melancholy changes.
I left as the sun was going down, tremendously impressed with the wonder of a life that is utterly gone. It was like finding the glistening shell of an extinct beetle or the suggestion in rocks of a prehistoric world. As I returned to my hotel along the thoroughly modern streets with their five- and six-story tenement and apartment buildings, their street cars and customary vehicles, their newspaper, flower and cigar stands, I tried to restore and keep in my mind a suggestion of the magnificence that Gibbon makes so significant. It was hard; for be one’s imagination what it will, it is difficult to live outside of one’s own day and hour. The lights already beginning to flourish in the smart shops, distracted my mood.