Being full of morning they imagined a
new earth and gave it a Lord. It was at Roncaglia, I think in spring,
and I wish I had been there. For in spring even the Lombard plain they
say is beautiful and generous, but in summer I know by experience that
it is cold, brutish, and wet.
And so in Piacenza it rained and there was mud, till I came to a hotel
called the Moor's Head, in a very narrow street, and entering it I
discovered a curious thing: the Italians live in palaces: I might have
known it.
They are the impoverished heirs of a great time; its garments cling to
them, but their rooms are too large for the modern penury. I found
these men eating in a great corridor, in a hall, as they might do in a
palace. I found high, painted ceilings and many things of marble, a
vast kitchen, and all the apparatus of the great houses - at the
service of a handful of contented, unknown men. So in England, when we
have worked out our full fate, happier but poorer men will sit in the
faded country-houses (a community, or an inn, or impoverished
squires), and rough food will be eaten under mouldering great
pictures, and there will be offices or granaries in the galleries of
our castles; and where Lord Saxonthorpe (whose real name is
Hauptstein) now plans our policy, common Englishmen will return to the
simpler life, and there will be dogs, and beer, and catches upon
winter evenings. For Italy also once gathered by artifice the wealth
that was not of her making.
He was a good man, the innkeeper of this palace. He warmed me at his
fire in his enormous kitchen, and I drank Malaga to the health of the
cooks. I ate of their food, I bought a bottle of a new kind of sweet
wine called 'Vino Dolce', and - I took the road.
LECTOR. And did you see nothing of Piacenza?
AUCTOR. Nothing, Lector; it was raining, and there was mud. I stood in
front of the cathedral on my way out, and watched it rain. It rained
all along the broad and splendid Emilian Way. I had promised myself
great visions of the Roman soldiery passing up that eternal road; it
still was stamped with the imperial mark, but the rain washed out its
interest, and left me cold. The Apennines also, rising abruptly from
the plain, were to have given me revelations at sunset; they gave me
none. Their foothills appeared continually on my right, they
themselves were veiled. And all these miles of road fade into the
confused memory of that intolerable plain. The night at Firenzuola,
the morning (the second morning of this visitation) still cold, still
heartless, and sodden with the abominable weather, shall form no part
of this book.
Things grand and simple of their nature are possessed, as you know, of
a very subtle flavour. The larger music, the more majestic lengths of
verse called epics, the exact in sculpture, the classic drama, the
most absolute kinds of wine, require a perfect harmony of circumstance
for their appreciation. Whatever is strong, poignant, and immediate in
its effect is not so difficult to suit; farce, horror, rage, or what
not, these a man can find in the arts, even when his mood may be heavy
or disturbed; just as (to take their parallel in wines) strong Beaune
will always rouse a man. But that which is cousin to the immortal
spirit, and which has, so to speak, no colour but mere light, _that_
needs for its recognition so serene an air of abstraction and of
content as makes its pleasure seem rare in this troubled life, and
causes us to recall it like a descent of the gods.
For who, having noise around him, can strike the table with pleasure
at reading the Misanthrope, or in mere thirst or in fatigue praise
Chinon wine? Who does not need for either of these perfect things
Recollection, a variety of according conditions, and a certain easy
Plenitude of the Mind?
So it is with the majesty of Plains, and with the haunting power of
their imperial roads.
All you that have had your souls touched at the innermost, and have
attempted to release yourselves in verse and have written trash - (and
who know it) - be comforted. You shall have satisfaction at last, and
you shall attain fame in some other fashion - perhaps in private
theatricals or perhaps in journalism. You will be granted a prevision
of complete success, and your hearts shall be filled - but you must not
expect to find this mood on the Emilian Way when it is raining.
All you that feel youth slipping past you and that are desolate at the
approach of age, be merry; it is not what it looks like from in front
and from outside. There is a glory in all completion, and all good
endings are but shining transitions. There will come a sharp moment of
revelation when you shall bless the effect of time. But this divine
moment - - it is not on the Emilian Way in the rain that you should
seek it.
All you that have loved passionately and have torn your hearts asunder
in disillusions, do not imagine that things broken cannot be mended by
the good angels. There is a kind of splice called 'the long splice'
which makes a cut rope seem what it was before; it is even stronger
than before, and can pass through a block. There will descend upon you
a blessed hour when you will be convinced as by a miracle, and you
will suddenly understand the _redintegratio amoris (amoris
redintegratio,_ a Latin phrase). But this hour you will not receive in
the rain on the Emilian Way.
