I Think I Have
Read That It Is Caused By A Germ; But, If Not, The Loss Is The Same,
And
until a parasite for the germ is found the loss must go on, and the work
of Giotto, of
Be-nozzo Gozzoli, of Memmi, must perish with that of the
Orgagnas, which may indeed go, for all me. Bible stories, miracles,
allegories - they are all hasting to decay, and it can be but a few years
until they shall vanish like the splendors of the dawn which they typify
in art.
In some things the ruin is not altogether to be regretted. It has
softened certain loathsome details of the charnel facts portrayed, and
in other pictures the torment and anguish of the lost souls are no
longer so painful as the old painters ascertained them. Hell in the
Campo Santo is not now the hell of other days, just as the hell of
Christian doctrine is not the hell it used to be. Death and the world
are indeed immitigable; the corpses in their coffins are as terrifying
to the gay lords and ladies who come suddenly upon them as ever they
were, though doubtless of no more lasting effect with such sinners than
they would be nowadays. But what one must chiefly lament is the waste of
the whole quaint and charming series of Scripture incidents by Benozzo
Gozzoli. This is indeed most lamentable, and after realizing the loss
one is only a little heartened by the gayety of certain grieving widows,
sitting in marble for monuments to their husbands at several points
under the arcades. What cheer they might have brought us was impaired by
the sight of the sarcophaguses and the other antiques against the walls,
which inflicted an inappeasable ache for the city where such things
abound, and brought our refluent Romesickness back full tide upon us.
More than once Pisa elsewhere did us the like involuntary unkindness;
she, too, is yellow and mellow like Rome, and she had moments of the
Piazza Navona and the Piazza di Spagna which were poignant. But she had
moments of her own when Rome could not rival her - such, for instance, as
that when she invited us from the perishing frescos of her Campo Santo
to turn our eyes on the flower-strewn field of death which the cloisters
surrounded, and where in the hallowed earth which her galleys brought
from Jerusalem her children, in their several turns, used to sleep so
sweetly and safely.
The afternoon sunlight was prolonging the day there as well as it could,
and we should have liked to linger with it as late as it would, but
there were other places in Pisa calling us, and we must go. We found our
driver, and his black-eyed boy beside him on the box, waiting for us at
the cathedral door, and we seem to have left it pretty much to them
where we should go. They decided us, if we really left it to them,
mainly for the outside of things, so that we might see as much of Pisa
as possible; but it appears to have been their notion that we ought to
visit, at least, the inside of the Church of the Knights of St.
Stephen. I do not know whether I protested or not that I had abundantly
seen this already, but, at any rate, I am now glad that they took us
there. As every traveller will pretend to remember, the main business of
the knights was to fight the Barbary pirates, and the main business of
their church is now to serve as a repository of the prows of the galleys
and the flags which they took in their battles with the infidels. There
are other monuments of their valor, but by all odds the flags will be
the most interesting to the American visitor, because of the start that
many of them will give him by their resemblance to our own banner, with
their red-and-white stripes, which the eye follows in vivid expectation
of finding the blue field of stars in the upper left-hand corner. It
never does find this, and that is the sufficient reason for holding to
the theory that our flag was copied from the armorial bearings of the
Washington family, and not taken from the standard of those paynim
corsairs; but there is poignant instant when one trembles.
We viewed, of course, the exterior of the edifice standing on the site
of the Tower of Famine, where the cruel archbishop starved the Count
Ugolino and his grandchildren to death; and we drove by the buildings of
Pisa's famous university, which we afterward fancied rather pervaded the
city with the young and ardent life of its students. It is no great
architectural presence, but there are churches and palaces to make up
for that. Everywhere you chance on them in the narrow streets and the
ample piazzas, but the palaces follow mostly the stately curve of the
Arno, where some of them have condescended to the office of hotels, and
where, I believe, one might live in economy and comfort; or, at any
rate, I should like to try. It would get rather warm there in May, and
July and August are not to be thought of, but all the other year it
would be divine, with such a prospect as can hardly be matched anywhere
else. Pisa used once to be the resort of many seeking health or warmth,
and for mere climate it ought again to come into favor. Probably there
is reasonably accessible society there, and, as the Livornese believe,
there is at least excellent opera. The time might grow long, but ought
not to be very heavy, and there is a cafe, at the very finest point of
the curve, where you can get an excellent cup of tea. Whether this
attests the resort or sojourn of many English, or the growth of the
tea-habit among the Pisans, I cannot say, but that cafe is very
charming, with students standing about in it and admiring the ladies who
come in to buy pastry, and who do not suppose there is any one there to
look at them.
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