Roman Holidays, and Others

William Dean Howells

Informations

• Publié par: sauc
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 20
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Roman Holidays and Others, by W. D. Howells
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Roman Holidays and Others
Author: W. D. Howells
Release Date: July 22, 2009 [EBook #7422]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMAN HOLIDAYS AND OTHERS ***
Produced by Eric Eldred, and David WidgerROMAN HOLIDAYS
AND OTHERS
By W. D. Howells
ILLUSTRATED
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Copyright, 1908, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
Copyright, 1908, by THE SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION.
Published October, 1908.
Contents
ROMAN HOLIDAYS AND OTHERS
I. UP AND DOWN MADEIRA.II. TWO UP-TOWN BLOCKS INTO SPAIN
III. ASHORE AT GENOA
IV. NAPLES AND HER JOYFUL NOISE
V. POMPEII REVISITED
VI. ROMAN HOLIDAYS
I. HOTELS, PENSIONS, AND APARTMENTS
II. A PRAISE OF NEW ROME
III. THE COLOSSEUM AND THE FORUM
IV. THE ANGLO-AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE
SPANISH STEPS
V. AN EFFORT TO BE HONEST WITH ANTIQUITY
VI. PERSONAL RELATIONS WITH THE PAST
VII. CHANCES IN CHURCHES
VIII. A FEW VILLAS
IX. DRAMATIC INCIDENTS
X. SEEING ROME AS ROMANS SEE US
XI. IN AND ABOUT THE VATICAN
XII. SUPERFICIAL OBSERVATIONS AND CONJECTURES
XIII. CASUAL IMPRESSIONS
XIV. TIVOLI AND FRASCATI
XV. A FEW REMAINING MOMENTS
VII. A WEEK AT LEGHORN
VIII. OVER AT PISA
IX. BACK AT GENOA
X. EDEN AFTER THE FALL
List of Illustrations
01 Glimpse Outside of Modern Rome
02 Funchal Bay
03 Boats and Diving Boys, Funchal04 Gibraltar from the Bay
05 Gibraltar from the Neutral Ground
06 Daughters of Climate Along the Riviera
07 Typical Monument in the Campo Santo
08 Naples and Her Joyful Noise
09 Out-door Life in Old Naples
10 Up-stairs Street in Old Naples
11 Naples and the Castel St. Elmo from
The Mole
12 Excavating at Pompeii
13 the Street of Tombs, Pompeii
14 the Capuchin Church, Rome
15 Glimpse Inside of Imperial Rome
16 Interior of Colosseum from the South
17 the Sacred Way Through The Forum
18 the Roman Forum
19 Spanish Steps
20 Toward the Pincian Hill
21 Sepulchre of Romulus, Forum
22 Trajan's Forum and Column
23 the Rostra in The Forum
24 the Mosaics Under The Capuchin
Church
25 Santa Maria Sopra Minerva
26 Church Op Ara Coeli
27 Church of Santa Maggiore
28 Michelangelo's "moses" in San Pietro In
Vincoli
29 the Little Stadium With Its Gradines
30 Casino of the Villa Doria and Gardens
31 the Carnival (as It Once Was)
32 the Fountain of Trevi
33 Colonnade and Fountain at St. Peter's
34 Sistine Chapel, Vatican Palace
35 Piazza Del Popolo from the Pincian Hill
36 the Baths of Diocletian37 Church of St. John Lateran and Lateran
Palace
38 Stairway and Fountain, Villa D'este
39 Villa Falconieri, Entrance, Frascati
40 in the Gardens of The Villa Falconieri
41 the Marble Faun
42 Marcus Aurelius With Out-stretched Arm
43 in the Villa Medici
44 the Baths of Caracalla
45 Piazza Victor Emanuel, Leghorn
46 the Canal at Leghorn
47 the Cathedral, Baptistery, and Leaning
Tower, Pisa
48 With Almost Any of My Backgrounds
49 Washing in the River, Genoa
50 Realistic Group in the Campo Santo
51 Monaco
52 the Casino, Monte Carlo
ROMAN HOLIDAYS AND
OTHERS
I. UP AND DOWN MADEIRA.
No drop-curtain, at any theatre I have seen, was ever so richly
imagined, with misty tops and shadowy clefts and frowning cliffs
and gloomy valleys and long, plunging cataracts, as the actual
landscape of Madeira, when we drew nearer and nearer to it, at the
close of a tearful afternoon of mid-January. The scenery of drop-
curtains is often very boldly beautiful, but here Nature, if she had
taken a hint from art, had certainly bettered her instruction. During
the waits between acts at the theatre, while studying the magnificent
painting beyond the trouble of the orchestra, I have been most
impressed by the splendid variety which the artist had got into his
picture, where the spacious frame lent itself to his passion for saying
everything; but I remembered his thronging fancies as meagre and
scanty in the presence of the stupendous reality before me. I have,
for instance, not even mentioned the sea, which swept smootherand smoother in toward the feet of those precipices and grew more
and more trans-lucently purple and yellow and green, while half a
score of cascades shot straight down their fronts in shafts of snowy
foam, and over their pachydermatous shoulders streamed and hung
long reaches of gray vines or mosses. To the view from the sea the
island is all, with its changing capes and promontories and bays
and inlets, one immeasurable mountain; and on the afternoon of our
approach it was bestridden by a steadfast rainbow, of which we
could only see one leg indeed, but that very stout and athletic.
There were breadths of dark woodland aloft on this mountain, and
terraced vineyards lower down; and on the shelving plateaus yet
farther from the heights that lost themselves in the clouds there were
scattered white cottages; on little levels close to the sea there were
set white villas. These, as the ship coquetted with the vagaries of
the shore, thickened more and more, until after rounding a
prodigious headland we found ourselves in face of the charming
little city of Funchal: long horizontal lines of red roofs, ivory and pink
and salmon walls, evenly fenestrated, with an ancient fortress giving
the modern look of things a proper mediaeval touch. Large hotels,
with the air of palaces, crowned the upland vantages; there were
bell-towers of churches, and in one place there was a wide splotch
of vivid color from the red of the densely flowering creeper on the
side of some favored house. There was an acceptable expanse of
warm brown near the quay from the withered but unfailing leaves of
a sycamore-shaded promenade, and in the fine roadstead where
we anchored there lay other steamers and a lead-colored
Portuguese war-ship. I am not a painter, but I think that here are the
materials of a water-color which almost any one else could paint. In
the hands of a scene-painter they would yield a really unrivalled
drop-curtain. I stick to the notion of this because when the beautiful
goes too far, as it certainly does at Madeira, it leaves you not only
sated but vindictive; you wish to mock it.
The afternoon saddened more and more, and one could not take an
interest in the islanders who came out in little cockles and proposed
to dive for shillings and sixpences, though quarters and dimes
would do. The company's tender also came out, and numbers of
passengers went ashore in the mere wantonness of paying for their
dinner and a night's lodging in the annexes of the hotels, which they
were told beforehand were full. The lights began to twinkle from the
windows of the town, and the dark fell upon the insupportable
picturesqueness of the prospect, leaving one to a gayety of trooping
and climbing lamps which defined the course of the streets.
The morning broke in sunshine, and after early breakfast the
launches began to ply again between the ship and the shore and
continued till nearly all the first and second cabin people had been
carried off. The people of the steerage satisfied what longing they
had for strange sights and scenes by thronging to the sides of the
steamer until they gave her a strong list landward, as they easily
might, for there were twenty-five hundred of them. At Madeira there
is a local Thomas Cook & Son of quite another name, but we were
not finally sure that the alert youth on the pier who sold us
transportation and provision was really their agent. However, his
tickets served perfectly well at all points, and he was of such an
engaging civility and personal comeliness that I should not have
much minded their failing us here and there. He gave the first
charming-touch of the Latin south whose renewed contact is such a
pleasure to any one knowing it from the past. All Portuguese as
Funchal was, it looked so like a hundred little Italian towns that it
seemed to me as if I must always have driven about them in calico-
tented bullock-carts set on runners, as later I drove about Eunchal.
It was warm enough on the ship, but here in the town we found
ourselves in weather that one could easily have taken for summer, if
the inhabitants had not repeatedly assured us that it was the seasonof winter, and that there were no flowers and no fruits. They could
not, if they had wished, have denied the flies; these, in a hotel
interior to which we penetrated, simply swarmed. If it was winter in
Funchal it was no wintrier than early autumn would have been in
one of those Italian towns of other days; it had the same
temperament, the same little tree-planted spaces, the same devious,
cobble-paved streets, the same pleasant stucco houses; the
churches had bells of like tone, and if their facades confessed a
Spanish touch they were not more Spanish than half the churches
in Naples. The public ways