CHAPTER XXXIX
FLORENCE OF TO-DAY
IT was while I was in Florence that a light was thrown on an industry of which I had previously known little and which impressed me much.
Brooding over the almost endless treasures of the city, I ambled into the Strozzi Palace one afternoon, that perfect example of Florentine palatial architecture, then occupied by an exposition of objects of art, reproductions and originals purporting to be the work of an association of Italian artists. After I had seen, cursorily, most of the treasures in the Palazzo Strozzi, I encountered a thing which I had long heard of but never seen,—an organization for the reproduction, the reduplication, of all the wonders of art, and cheaply, too. The place was full of marbles of the loveliest character, replicas of famous statues in the Vatican, the Louvre, the Uffizi, and elsewhere; and in many instances, also, copies of the great pictures. There was beautiful furniture imitated, even as to age, from many of the Italian palaces, the Riccardi, Albizzi, Pazzi, Pitti, Strozzi, and others; and as for garden-fittings—fountains, fauns, cupids, benches, metal gateways, pergolas, and the like, they were all present. They were marvelous reproductions from some of the villas, with the patina of age upon them, and I thought at first that they were original. I was soon undeceived, for I had not been there long, strolling about, when an attendant brought and introduced to me a certain Prof. Ernesto Jesuram, a small, dark, wiry man with clear, black, crowlike eyes who made clear the whole situation.
The markets of the world, according to Mr. Jesuram, a Jew, were being flooded with cheap imitations of every truly worthy object of art, from Italian stone benches to landscapes by Corot or portraits by Frans Hals—masquerading as originals; and it had been resolved by this Association of Italian Artists that this was unfair, not only to the buyer and the art-loving public generally, but also to the honest craftsman who could make an excellent living reproducing, frankly, copies of ancient works of merit at a nominal price, if only they were permitted to copy them. Most, in fact all of them, could make interesting originals but in many cases they would lack that trait of personality which makes all the difference between success and failure; whereas they could perfectly reproduce the masterpieces of others and that, too, for prices with which no foreigner could compete. So they had banded themselves together, determined to do better work, and sell more cheaply than the fly-by-night rascals who were confounding and degrading all good art and to say frankly to each and all: “Here is a perfect reproduction of a very lovely thing. Do you want it at a very low cost?” or, “We will make for you an exact copy of anything that you see and admire and wish to have and we will make it so cheaply that you cannot afford to dicker with doubtful dealers who sell you imitations as originals and charge you outrageous prices.”
I have knocked about sufficiently in my time in the showy chambers of American dealers and elsewhere to know that there is entirely too much in what was told me.
The wonder of Florence grew a little under the Professor’s quiet commercial analysis, for after exhausting this matter of reproducing so cheaply, we proceeded to a discussion of the present conditions of the city.
“It’s very different commercially from anything in America or the north of Europe,” he said, “or even the north of Italy, for as yet we have scarcely anything in the way of commerce here. We still build in the fashion they used five hundred years ago—narrow streets and big cornices in order to keep up the atmosphere of the city, for we are not strong enough commercially yet to go it alone, and besides I don’t think the Italians will ever be different. They are an easy-going race. They don’t need the American “two dollars a day” to live on. Fifty centimes will do. For one thousand dollars (five thousand lire) you can rent a palace here for a year and I can show you whole floors overlooking gardens that you can rent for seventeen dollars a month. We have a garden farther out that we use as a workshop here in Florence, in the heart of the city, which we rent for four hundred dollars a year.”
“What about the Italian’s idea of progress? Isn’t he naturally constructive?” I asked Mr. Jesuram.
“Rarely the Italian. Not at this date. We have many Jews and Germans here who are doing well, and foreign capital is building street-railways. I think the Italians will have to be fused with another nation to experience a new birth. The Germans are mixing with them. If they ever get as far south as Sicily, Italy will be made over; the Germans themselves will be made over. I notice that the Italians and Germans get along well together.”
I thought of the age-long wars between the Teutons and the Italians from the fifth to the twelfth century, but those days are over. They can apparently mingle in peace now, as I saw here and farther north.
It was also while I was in Florence that I first became definitely and in an irritated way conscious of a certain aspect of travel which no doubt thousands of other travelers have noted for themselves but of which, nevertheless, I feel called upon to speak.
I could never come in to the breakfast table either there, or at Rome, or in Venice, or Milan, without encountering a large company of that peculiarly American brand of sightseers, not enormously rich, of no great dignity, but comfortable and above all enormously pleased with themselves. I could never look at any of this tribe, comfortably clothed, very pursy and fussy, without thinking what a far cry it is from the temperament which makes for art or great originality to the temperament which makes for normality—the great, so-called sane, conservative mass. God spare me! I’ll admit that for general purposes, the value of breeding, trading, rearing of children in comfort, producing the living atmosphere of life in which we “find” ourselves and from which art, by the grace of great public occasions may rise, people of this type are essential. But seen individually, dissociated from great background masses, they are—but let me not go wild. Viewed from the artistic angle, the stress of great occasions, great emotion, great necessities, they fall into such pigmy weaknesses, almost ridiculous. Here abroad they come so regularly, Pa and Ma. Pa infrequently, and a little vague-looking from overwork and limited vision of soul; Ma not infrequently, a little superior, vain, stuffy, envious, dull and hard. I never see such a woman as that but my gorge rises a little. The one idea of a pair like this, particularly of the mother, is the getting her children (if there be any) properly married, the girls particularly, and in this phase of family politics Pa has obviously little to say. Their appearance abroad, accompanied by Henry and George, Junior, and Mary and Anabel, is for—I scarcely know what. It is so plain on the face of it that no single one of them has the least inkling of what he is seeing. I sat in a carriage with two of them in Rome, viewing the ruins of the Via Appia, and when we reached the tomb of Cæcilia Metella I heard:
“Oh, yes. There it is. What was she, anyhow? He was a Roman general, I think, and she was his wife. His house was next door and he built this tomb here so she would be near him. Isn’t it wonderful? Such a nice idea!”
So far as I could make out from watching this throng the principal idea was to be able to say that they had been abroad. Poor old Florence! Its beauty and its social significance passed unrecognized. Art, so far as I could judge from the really unmoved spectators present, was for crazy people. The artist was some weird, spindling, unfortunate fool, a little daft perhaps, but tolerable for a strange furore he seemed to have created. Great men made and used him. He was, after his fashion, a servant. The objectionable feature of a picture like Botticelli’s “Spring” would be the nudity of the figures! From a Rubens or a nude Raphael we lead brash, unctuous, self-conscious Mary away in silence. If we encounter, perchance, quite unexpectedly a “Leda” by Michelangelo or a too nude “Assumption” by Bronzino, we turn away in disgust. Art must be limited to conventional theories and when so limited is not worth much anyhow.
It was amazing to see them strutting in and out, their good clothes rustling, an automobile in waiting, noisily puffing the while they gather aimless “impressions” wherewith to browbeat their neighbors. George and Henry and Mary and Anabel, protesting half the time or in open rebellion, are duly led to see the things which have been the most enthusiastically recommended, be they palaces or restaurants.
I often wondered what it was—the best—which these people got out of their trip abroad. The heavy Germans I saw I always suspected of having solid Teutonic understanding and appreciation of everything; the English were uniformly polite, reserved, intelligent, apparently discriminating. But these Americans! If you told them the true story of Antinous, whose head I saw them occasionally admiring; or forced upon them the true details of the Borgias, the Sforzas, the Medici, or even the historical development of Art, they would fly in horror. They have no room in their little crania for anything save their own notions,—the standards of the Methodist Church at Keokuk. I think, sometimes, perhaps it is because we are all growing to a different standard, trying to make life something different from what it has always been, or appeared to be, that all the trouble comes about. Time will remedy that. Life,—its heavy, interminable processes,—will break any theory. I conceive of life as a blind goddess, pouring from separate jars, one of which she holds in each hand, simultaneously, the streams of good and evil, which mingling, make this troubled existence, flowing ever onward to the sea.
It was also while I was at Florence that I finally decided to change my plan and visit Venice. “It is a city without a disappointment,” a publisher-friend of mine had one time assured me, with the greatest confidence. And so, here at Florence, on this first morning, I altered my plans; I changed my ticket at Thomas Cook’s and crowded Venice in between Florence and Milan. I gave myself a stay of four days, deciding to lengthen it if I chose.
I really think that every traveler of to-day owes a debt of gratitude to Thomas Cook & Sons. I never knew, until I went abroad what an accommodation the offices of this concern are. Your mail is always courteously received and cared for; your routes and tickets are changed and altered at your slightest whim; your local bank is their cash-desk and the only advisers you have, if you are alone and without the native tongue at your convenience, are their clerks and agents at the train. It does not make any difference to me that that is their business and that they make a profit. In a foreign city where you are quite alone you would grant them twice the profit for this courtesy. And it was my experience, in the slight use I made of their service, that their orders and letters of advice were carefully respected and that when you came conducted by Thomas Cook, whether you took the best or the worst, you were politely and assiduously looked after.
One of the most amusing letters that I received while abroad was from this same publisher-friend who wanted me to go to Venice. Not so long before I left Rome, he had arrived with his wife, daughter, and a young girl friend of his daughter whose first trip abroad they were sponsoring. At a luncheon they had given me, the matter of seeing the Pope had come up and I mentioned that I had been so fortunate as to find some one who could introduce me, and that it was just possible, if they wished it, that my friend would extend his courtesy to them. The young girls in particular were eager, but I was not sure. I left Rome immediately afterward, writing to my British correspondent, bespeaking his interest in their behalf, and at the same time to my publisher-friend that I was doing so. As an analysis of girlhood vagaries, keen and clever, read his letter:
My Dear Dreiser:
The young woman who thinks she wants to see the Pope goes under the name of Margaret,—but I wouldn’t try very hard to bring it about, because if Margaret went, my daughter would want to go, and if Margaret and my daughter went, my wife would feel out in the cold. (The old man can stand it.)
Margaret’s motives are simply childish curiosity, possibly combined with a slight desire to give pleasure to the Holy Father.
But don’t try to get that Papal interview for Margaret unless you can get it for all the ladies. You will introduce a serpent into my paradise.
No serpent was introduced because I couldn’t get the interview.
And the cells and cloister of San Marco,—shall I ever forget them? I went there on a spring morning (spring in Italy) when the gleaming light outside filled the cloister with a cool brightness, and studied the frescoes of Fra Angelico and loitered between the columns of the arches in the cloister proper, meditating upon the beauty of the things here gathered. Really, Italy is too beautiful. One should be a poet in soul, insatiable as to art, and he should linger here forever. Each poorest cell here has a small fresco by Fra Angelico, and the refectory, the chapter house, and the foresteria are filled with large compositions, all rich in that symbolism which is only wonderful because of the art-feeling of the master. I lingered in the cells, the small chambers once occupied by Savonarola, and meditated on the great zealot’s imaginings. In a way his dream of the destruction of the Papacy came true. Even as he preached, the Reformation was at hand, only he did not know it. Martin Luther was coming. The black cross was over Rome! And also true was his thought that the end of the old order in Italy had come. It surely had. Never afterwards was it quite the same and never would it be so again. And equally true was his vision of the red cross over Jerusalem, for never was the simple humanism of Jesus so firmly based in the minds of men as it is to-day, though all creeds and religious theories totter wearily to their ruin. Savonarola was destroyed, but not his visions or his pleas. They are as fresh and powerful to-day, as magnetic and gripping, as are any that have been made in history.
It was the same with the Bargello, the tombs of the Medici, San Miniato and the basilica and monastery at Fiesole. That last, with the wind singing in the cypresses, a faint mist blowing down the valley of the Arno, all Florence lying below and the lights of evening beginning to appear, stands fixed and clear in my mind. I saw it for the last time the evening before I left. I sat on a stone bench overlooking a wonderful prospect, rejoicing in the artistic spirit of Italy which has kept fresh and clean these wonders of art, when I was approached by a brown Dominican, his feet and head bare, his body stout and comfortable. He asked for alms! I gave him a lira for the sake of Savonarola who belonged to his order and—because of the spirit of Italy, that in the midst of a changing, commercializing world still ministers to these shrines of beauty and keeps them intact and altogether lovely.
One last word and I am done. I strolled out from Santa Croce one evening a little confused by the charm of all I had seen and wondering how I could best bestow my time for the remaining hours of light. I tried first to find the house of Michelangelo which I fancied was somewhere in the vicinity, but not finding it, came finally to the Arno which I followed upstream. The evening was very pleasant, quite a sense of spring in the air and of new-made gardens, and I overcame my disappointment at having failed to accomplish my original plan. I passed new streets, wider than the old ones in the heart of the city, with street lamps, arc-lights, modern awnings and a trolley-car running in the distance. Presently I came to a portion of the Arno lovelier than any I had yet seen. Of course the walls through which it flows in the city had disappeared and in their place came grass-covered banks with those tall thin poplars I had so much admired in France. The waters were a “Nile green” at this hour and the houses, collected in small groups, were brown, yellow, or white, with red or brown roofs and brown or green shutters. The old idea of arches with columns and large projecting roofs still persisted in these newer, outlying houses and made me wonder whether Florence might not, after all, always keep this characteristic.
As I went farther out the houses grew less frequent and lovely bluish-black hills appeared. There was a smoke-stack in the distance, just to show that Florence was not dead to the idea of manufacturing, and beyond in a somewhat different direction the dome of the cathedral,—that really impressive dome.
Some men were fishing in the stream from the bank, apparently catching nothing. I noticed the lovely cypresses of the South in the distance, the large villas on the hills, and here and there clumps of those tall, slender trees of France, not conspicuous elsewhere on my journey.
In one place I noticed the largest display of washing I have ever seen, quite the largest,—a whole field of linen, no less, hung out to dry; and in another place some slow-moving men cutting wood.
It was very warm, very pleasant, slightly suggestive of rain, with the smoke going up straight, and after a while when the evening church-bells were beginning to ring, calling to each other from vale and hill, my sense of springtime and pleasant rural and suburban sweetness was complete.
Laughter carried I noticed, in some peculiar, echoing way. The music of the bells was essentially quieting. I had no sense of Florence, old or new, but just spring, hope, new birth. And as I turned back after a time I knew I had acquired a different and very precious memory of Florence—something that would last me years and years. I should always think of the Arno as it looked this evening—how safe and gracious and still. I should always hear the voices in laughter, and the bells; I should always see the children playing on the green banks, quite as I used to play on the Wabash and the Tippecanoe; and their voices in Italian were no less sweet than our childish voices. I had a feeling that somehow the spirit of Italy was like that of America, and that somehow there is close kinship between us and Italy, and that it was not for nothing that an Italian discovered America or that Americans, of all people, have apparently loved Italy most and rivaled it most closely in their periods of greatest achievement.