So Far As We Might Guess, It Was A Little More Clerical Than
Liberal In Its Local Politics; If You
Were very Liberal, it was well to
be careful, for Conversion lurked under many exteriors which gave no
outward sign
Of it; if the White of the monarchy and the Black of the
papacy divide the best Roman families, of course foreigners are more
intensely one or the other than the natives. But Anglo-Saxon life was
easy for one not self-obliged to be of either opinion or party; and it
was pleasant in most of its conditions. In Rome our internationali-ties
seemed to have certain quarters largely to themselves. In spite of our
abhorrence of the destruction and construction which have made modern
Rome so wholesome and delightful, most of us had our habitations in the
new quarters; but certain pleasanter of the older streets, like the Via
Sistina, Via del Babuino, Via Capo le Case, Via Gregoriana, were our
sojourn or our resort. Especially in the two first our language filled
the outer air to the exclusion of other conversation, and within doors
the shopmen spoke it at least as well as the English think the Americans
speak it. It was pleasant to meet the honest English faces, to recognize
the English fashions, to note the English walk; and if these were
oftener present than their American counterparts, it was not from our
habitual minority, but from our occasional sparsity through the panic
that had frightened us into a homekeeping foreign to our natures.
In like manner our hyphenated nationalities have the Piazza di Spagna
for their own. There are the two English book-stores and the circulating
libraries, in each of which the books are so torn and dirty that you
think they cannot be quite so bad in the other till you try it; there
seems nothing for it, then, but to wash and iron the different Tauchnitz
authors, and afterward darn and mend them. The books on sale are, of
course, not so bad; they are even quite clean; and except for giving out
on the points of interest where you could most wish them to abound,
there is nothing in them to complain of. There is less than nothing to
complain of in the tea-room which enjoys our international favor except
that at the most psychological moment of the afternoon you cannot get a
table, in spite of the teas going on in the fashionable hotels and the
friendly houses everywhere. The toast is exceptional; the muffins so
far from home are at least reminiscent of their native island; the tea
and butter are alike blameless. The company, to the eye of the friend of
man, is still more acceptable, for, if the Americans have dwindled, the
English have increased; and there is nothing more endearing than the
sight of a roomful of English people at their afternoon tea in a strange
land. No type seems to predominate; there are bohemians as obvious as
clerics; there are old ladies and young, alike freshly fair; there are
the white beards of age and the clean-shaven cheeks of youth among the
men; some are fashionable and some outrageously not; peculiarities of
all kinds abound without conflicting.
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