A-IiOUSE-HUNTER' ■IN EUROPE- LiBRARY OF CONGRESS. Slielf-..Bi53 UNIlJKl) STATES OF AMEEICA. A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE BY ^ I WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP AUTHOR OF " OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES" " DETMOLD " THE HOUSE OF A MERCHANT PRINCE" ETC. JUN 27 ^893/ NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1893 Copyright, 1893, by Harper & Brothers. All rights reserved. i* C OWGR ESsf ashingtokI CONTENTS FIRST PERIOD CHAPTER I. — House-hunting and Housekeeping, from the Port of Cherbourg to Stately Versailles, II. — A Balconied Apartment in Paris, . III. — A Glimpse of Paris Social Life, . IV. — A Paris Exposition in Dishabille, . V.-— Houses and Gardens in the Suburbs of Paris, SECOND PERIOD VI. — Nevers, and a Tune on a Faience Violin, VII. — The Cities of Provence, and especially Avignon, VIII. — With the New Troubadours at Avignon, IX. — A First Look at the Riviera; and Up and Down Al geria, ....... X. — Spain, and especially Granada, XI. — Ole — Mulas ! — Stage-coaching to Old Jaen, . XII. — Cordova, Seville, and About Pretty Spanish Women XIIL— To Madrid, and When You Get There, . XIV.— A Day in Literary Madrid, .... XV. — Ascetic Escorial and Sculptured Salamanca, XVI. — Being a Bachelor of Salamanca, XVII. — " Ifs" and " Buts" Through the Pyrenees, Gascony Touraine, and the Orleans Country, I 15 30 44 58 66 84 93 106 120 129 138 149 154 174 184 203 THIRD PERIOD XVIII. — A French Moving — to the Land of Mignon's Song, 210 XIX. — A Year in a Mediterranean Villa, .... 221 XX. — The Gamblers' Paradise of Monte Carlo, . . 238 iii IV CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XXI. — A Rural Passion-Play at Cabbe-Roquebrune, . . 251 XXII. — Our Eligible Neighbors, the Queen and the Em- peror, ........ 259 XXTII. — How it was in the Island of Corsica, . . . 279 XXIV. — A New Pilgrimage to Canterbury, and to London, Windsor, and Oxford, ..... 292 FOURTH PERIOD XXV. — Spying out the Land in Italy. — From Pisa, Lucca, and the Baths of Lucca, to Rome, . . . 302 XXVI. — For and Against Florence, Siena, Perugia, and Venice, ........ 3^6 XXVII. — Six Months in a Palazzina at Verona, . . . 330 XXVIII. — Would You Summer at Bosco Chiesanuova? . . 344 XXIX. — Some Italian Housekeepers, and Conclusion at Nice, 351 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE CHAPTER I HOUSE-HUNTING AND HOUSEKEEPING FROM THE PORT OF CHERBOURG TO STATELY VERSAILLES In the next place, then — for the prejudice against going back to the beginning of the world to tell how it all came about is really too well founded, — in the next place, then, we landed at Cherbourg, — in the last days of July. It is no " editorial we " that is here employed : the pronoun refers to a family of two which had been mar- ried about a couple of years, to a day. We are by no means to hold up our modest housekeeping experiences here as a model, — indeed, I fear we shall too often prove only "the horrible example;" but we have thought they might have some small interest of novelty, and a value if only on this very ground of showing peo- ple what to avoid if not what to imitate. When we had spoken, before leaving home, of being gone two years, our friends in America had called it a long time, and we ourselves hardly believed in so much. But, in the sequel, our experiment extended its propor- tions to nearly five years instead of two. And, what is more, from this warm, sunny, fragrant Riviera which 2 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE became our harbor of refuge after many wanderings, we are scarce ready even yet to depart. We had no set destination. We did not want a great many of the things that other people want ; we were not in search of good schools, musical advantages, im- proving society, in the usual sense, nor a climate to restore our shattered health. We wanted to gratify to the full that taste for antiquity and romantic tradition which is so very American, for all that it is the way of the world to represent us as so exclusively modern and practical. And we wanted to test personally the cheapness of foreign living, of which we hear so much. Our theory was that, a man of letters could write as well, or as ill, on one side of the water as the other; and the advice to reduce one's divisor, if he can't in- crease his dividend, could not be carried out so favor- ably in any other way. When we come to figures, it will be seen that the promise was justified, and notable economies were really possible. Indeed, I fear people looking for practical advice would do well to take our prices " and upward, " as the hotel-keepers say; for it would be rather difficult to depart much from them downward. Other people simply travelled, we meant to keep house, in romantic places, and see the life through and through. That should be our form of originality. We had an idea we might even seek first some quiet French village, and find entertainment enough there. There would certainly be some good architecture, which is scattered everywhere, and plenty of history, — perhaps, for the American habit, used to making much of a lit- tle, there would be even too much. We would go one day to the local fete^ another to see the administration HOUSE-HUNTING AND HOUSEKEEPING 3 of justice, another to a marriage at the inairie^ and the like. We should probably get acquainted with the mayor, the doctor, the acre\ and other local dignitaries; — in short, we should be in a position to study the place in complete and satisfactory detail. What is the mat- ter with such a programme ? And, then, if it be true, as our critics represent, that the best material for fiction is the vestiges of foreign life that linger about our shores, there must be infinitely more in plunging over head and ears into foreign life itself, — foreign life free from admixture with any Americanism. Remark that I say, skeptically, if it be true, for our plan had no need of this argument at least. So now, I begin. It almost seemed at first as if Cherbourg itself would do. There, all at once, were the traditional French at- mosphere, the silvery-gray, warm tones, the uniforms, the peasants, men in Millet-blue blouses, and women in white caps fresh as snowflakes, and Napoleon prancing on horseback in a wide paved square, and promising to renew in the navy yard before him " the marvels of Egypt." A beach with a pretty Casino, too; but these were suffering, like all the bathing-beaches along the coast, from an exceptionally cold summer. Brit- tany and its neighborhood are a rainy country at best, and its drawback was unusually manifest that year. It did not rain all the time, it is true, and the broken gleams of sunshine gave charming effects of light. Still, no sooner was your umbrella down than you must put it up again, and no sooner was it up than you must put it down again — which finished by becoming embetanty as they say in the country. Cherbourg was not even a very good place to rest in. 4 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE We connect with it an uncommon clatter of wooden shoes over the stones, a booming of heavy carts and cabs, a shrieking of whistles in the port, a piping of bugles and a trotting along of troops, very early in the morning, at that double-quick pace which has become the recognized gait of the modern French soldier. We did not ask the price of any houses at Cherbourg, but we first became acquainted there with the " Saint Michel " whose name figures so prominently on the bills of all houses to let. I believe we had, for a moment, an idea that the places were billed "/, far to the southward, would in- sist on seeming superior to all others. Why speak of London ? I looked about there a little, but not with much heart. I was told we could go and live respectably somewhere for a rent of £60. Sup- posing it had been under the murky glooms of Bedford Park, or some other monotonous flat half-suburb? Would an occasional run in Kew Gardens, when the A NEW PILGRIMAGE 30I heavens did not pour, have been compensation enough ? Or suppose we had gone to Hampstead Heath, where I hear there is quite a literary and artistic colony. All the same, we should have been fatiguing miles and miles from everything. The English like to lecture us upon our haste and worry in living; but it seems to me there can be no other spot in the world where such fa- tigue, such endless travel by rail or cab, are a necessary preliminary to every detail of life, every petty visit, every attempt at profit or pleasure, as in London. Life is almost defeated by its own unwieldiness. That there is a certain pleasant bustle about it all is undeniable, but would it be a sufficient offset to the rest to learn to swing a knowing umbrella at the " Sa- ville Club," the "Hogarth," the "Cri," the "Seven Bells;" to know how to take the proper 'bus to Hyde Park Corner ; to be cheek by jowl with great names, the publishing interest, the new American leaven — with pic- tures, books, the measures of the day ? Would the infant at Villefranche welcome the exchange? Well, hardly. I see that George Gissing, in that book which em- bodies so many woful experiences with a vivid appear- ance of truth, his "New Grub Street," thinks literary men ought not to live in London at all. " Not after they know it," you hasten to rectify. I stand corrected ; and I shall aspire to know it, then, some time, to the most favorable advantage. But meantime, nothing seemed to shine in murky London, except an occasional door-knocker. Was one to be content with the gleam of a brass door-knocker when he had been used to the full sun of the Mediter- ranean ? And so it was settled that, if we moved at all, we should move to Italy. CHAPTER XXV SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY FROM PISA, LUCCA AND THE BATHS OF LUCCA TO ROME I THINK I shall some time write an article on " Trav- ellers' Drivers." On comparing the accounts of jour- neys, these gentry are found to occupy a remarkable place in the foreground. They agree in general raci- ness of character, a tendency to quaint sayings, un- trustworthy information, and tricky bargaining. But has attention enough ever been given to the extent to which they redeem their faults and make return for value received by filling up the traveller's pages? Within a fortnight after the return from the English journey, as heretofore described, I set off anew, for Italy, on yet another house-hunting trip. I too had a driver — but I shall postpone an account of him till the article in question, only mentioning here that he told me that, in the place to which we were first bound, houses were not only cheap, but positively given away. I had left Pisa behind, its famous monuments show- ing in the distance like some great travelling show turned to stone; and I had left behind the clean little ducal city of Lucca. At Lucca, the Sunday bells chimed in the early morning. You look down from the green ramparts into the gardens of many pretty villas, with marble lions on their gateposts. In one, a troop of Bernini statues, the kind that are all so intensely on 302 SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY 303 the move, seemed rehearsing among themselves for pri- vate theatricals. Yet I had not asked the price of any dwelling in Lucca, and had not even looked at any in Pisa. The country was flat, and the impression of the sixty-three days winter's rain, statistics give it, as against only thirty-six to Nice, was perhaps unduly strong, at this opening stage. There was no resolution arrived at to leave the Villa des Amandiers; in many respects we could hardly hope to find its equal. Still, it is scarce in human nature to rest content with any situation, no matter how pleasant, if a chance remains of bettering it. It seemed, too, in an educational sense, almost a matter of clear duty, to spend the next year in Italy. At any rate, I had set off to spy out the land. The drive was a rather hard one, of sixteen miles up to the Baths of Lucca, in the mountain. The Baths of Lucca is a nice little summer resort, rather fallen from once greater popularity, and we thought it might possibly do for winter also. Its decline in popularity could scarcely harm it in our eyes and for our purposes, but rather the contrary. The place proved to be a mere secluded vale by a tumbling stream, which would now recall the Catskills and now, with its smooth, civilized walk between two principal villages, Pau or Dinan. There was a deep, lush greenness about it, too, an English look here and there — the doing of former English proprietors who had left behind them some hedges and spaces of green lawn — that most refreshing of rarities in these southerly lati- tudes. The landlady of the inn told us she had lately had her house quite full only of English and American women, with not a man among them. A small principal street with shops; a few gray tow- 304 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE ers ; a crowd of peasants at the bridge, all men ; a neat bath establishment ; a casino, with a cheerful frieze of musical instruments sculptured all round it ; small hotels, and apartments to let, such was the Baths of Lucca. In spite of my driver's information, the prices really were cheap. You could have a furnished house, a quiet, restful place, with a grass plot before it, in the centre of things, for 800 francs the season, and not much more, I judged, for the whole of the year. That was the very best there was. The neatest, most taking, on the whole, was an apartment, for 400 francs, in the house of Signora E O . It had four good bed- rooms, a salon, and quite a vast dining-room, all very nicely furnished. From the back, you looked out upon a strip of garden, and high up to the third village of the group, cresting the slope of the hill. It was hot that day with a humid, oppressive heat, though but the nth of May. It would no doubt be cold enough in winter, by way of recompense; but life then, at the far end of so long a drive, could not fail to be almost too hermit-like. I kept on southward, to Rome, by way of Civita Vec- chia. The most surprising feature, after an absence of sixteen years, was the prosperous appearance of those once half-waste and fever-stricken districts, the Ma- remme and the Campagna. Excellent new buildings and fences, haymakers at work, grain-fields and vine- yards, fine cattle and sheep, gave tangible sign of the rise of new Italy, the extent to which the old order was changing. The fresh young kingdom, having made an Italy, had next to make Italians; and it is making them to good advantage, even in the plain about the gates of Rome which immemorial tradition SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY 305 had taught us to shrink from as poisonous. In cross- ing the Campagna by the branch railroads to Frascati and Albano, or flying out to charming Tivoli by the steam tramway, continually laden with merry excur- sionists, you find it full of fragrant hay, and of flocks and herds and their able-bodied keepers. The people, both men and women, look well and content, the chil- dren as chubby and thriving, as could be expected even in districts of far better repute. I did not neglect to seek our quarters too in the sub- urban villages on the foothills of the Alban and Sabine mountains, within a radius of twenty-five miles of Rome ; in Frascati, more spruce and modern, Albano, older and dingier, and Tivoli, apparently protected forever against the commonplace by its site on the grand cliffs, and its temple of the Sibyl looking down upon the foaming milk-like cataracts. And yet what think you was the latest at Tivoli ? The cataracts had been made to turn the wheels furnishing power for the motors that were to give Rome a blaze of electric light worthy of the splendid court of the Quirinal. Villas and apartments were few and far between. As a rule they were furnished, so that it began to look as if the ownership of furniture of one's own might not be such an advantage, after all. Without regard, too, to relative climates and comforts, and judging only by the standard I had left behind me, they were dear. The 350,000 inhabitants of Rome reserve these suburban villages chiefly to themselves and their summer outings, and competition keeps up the prices. A rude, unfur- nished villa, near the bridge, at Ariccia, the property of some Roman prince, would have been, if I had taken it, 1,500 francs. 20 3o6 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE What most nearly tempted me was a large old house at Castel Gandolfo, with a garden at the rear looking across the wide Campagna to misty Rome. It was pleasantly furnished, it is true, but, in front, all the population of the main street crowded up against its doorsteps; and when the local omnibus was off duty, it also seemed to be laid up there. Would it have been put down to a low-priced'figure, on that account? Per- haps, but I doubt it. And even if it had been, who can say whether it would have been worth it at any figure? Some put their ideal of comfort in one thing, and some in another; for myself, an important part of it is *' elbow-room," the right to be decently let alone. It is not to disrelish one's fellow-creatures to feel in this way, heaven forbid! On the contrary, does not one issue forth with sympathies all the fresher and readier to enter helpfully into their concerns, if he does not collide too closely with them and have their small mis- eries under his eye at every instant ? The country all about was full of charm. There were smooth roads and pleasant footpaths shaded by ancient trees, the old papal palace on top of the ridge, the Campagna on one side and Lake Albano on the other; and a little further on, beyond Ariccia, the smaller Lake of Nemi, as virginal and lonely as if in some primeval forest of America. Yes, other things being propitious, I should have chosen Castel Gandolfo above all. The new districts of Rome, the great modern up- heaval of which we hear so much about, are not im- mediately obvious to the new-comer upon his arrival, except that of course he sees at once the new quarter of the Quirinal, the latest grand hotel, the fine bustling new thoroughfare of the Via Nazionale, for all these SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY 307 are on his way in descending from the station. What a delicious gHmpse of emerald green garden through the archway of the royal palace! What splendid colos- sal cuirassiers on guard ! It is such a pity that anything unpleasant should have grown out of the coming of the court to Rome, for the royalties are, as royalties go, so good a pair. Queen Margherita is so especially sweet and charming a woman, and Italian unity a cause to be so worthily and genuinely enthusiastic about. By reason of the stimulus imparted by the arrival of the court, there had been a tremendous overbuilding and over- speculation in land. Political movements, the war of tariffs with France, brought on the collapse. In the year 1889 alone, there was a falling-off in exports to the amount of $30,000,000; and $30,000,000 would pay for a good deal of building, either in Italy or else- where. Mr. Crawford has well used this dramatic latter- day material in his novel of "Don Orsino." A certain Prince Borghese, whose ancestor had en- riched himself by an earlier building of Rome, was now bankrupted by the same cause. There were said to be whole settlements of new buildings, out at the Porta Pia and the Porta Salara, standing doorless, window- less, and roofless, falling to pieces even before they were finished. One does not wish to profit by the mis- fortunes of his neighbors, but, since this situation ex- isted, by no fault of ours, I had an idea that we might be driven to install ourselves, at a mere nominal rent, in some grand new suite of apartments, and that we should try to make with a good grace the sacrifice of taste necessary for that purpose. There was little change in the better portion of old Rome — the portion that tradition has long assigned as 308 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE the Strangers' Quarter. Ten chances to one, your friends who go abroad write their letters from the Corso, or the Via del Babuino, or the Piazza di Spagna, or from one or two of the streets up at the top • of its vast staircase, on the Pincian. These last were much the best of all, but the apartments were chiefly furnished, for the use of temporary sojourners, and were well charged for, even at American standards. Quarters for permanent occupation were scarce to be had. If you will look at the map, you will see, too, that, in the precinct below, you could not get much sun for any price, for the principal streets run in such a way that it cannot enter the windows. On the Pincian it was dif- ferent. I should not have minded at all living at num- ber blank Via Sistina or number blank San Trinita de' Monti. The sun, a wide view down the Spanish Steps, a sculptured house, w^ith flowers on its loggia^ in front, and in five minutes' walk, or so, you could reach the fountain of the Villa Medici, and look off from under the live oaks at the famous sunset view of St. Peter's, or watch the defile of carriages in the park. But one of these apartments was 400 francs a month, and the other 180; and this, you see, was not within our con- ditions. I was turned back, here, with great reluctance, and only by default of the proper sort of bills " To Let." The search in Rome was long, not only because, as elsewhere, house-hunting would naturally lapse into sight-seeing, but still more from the quite surprising lack of accommodations, I began to traverse the city vigorously in all directions, leaving the question of salubrity to be settled after a choice, in other respects attractive, had been made. But I found that foreigners SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY 309 long resident in Rome, acquaintance to whom I brought letters, scouted the idea of any settled portion of Rome being unhealthy. There was one who told me he had repeatedly driven across the Campagna, as late as eleven o'clock at night, while spending his summers at Albano, and had never come to any harm. If every- body could only settle the problem of living in Rome as he had! An American of intelligence, literary cul- ture, and wealth, he had taken an ancient palace by Bramante, and become almost more Roman than the Romans themselves. I do not know that I envied him his severe entrance court, with a few dull shrubs on the staircase, — no glowing oranges, no rosy oleanders, prodigal of fragrance, here! — nor even his spacious chambers, bright with color and attractive with good taste; but when we came to his library, I distinctly did, and do, envy him. What a room, mes amis^ what a room! Many a public library of much pretence could be contained within it. Books from the floor to the lofty ceiling; a music-gallery at one end, a platform at the other. It might once have been a state banquet- ing-hall, and yet, vast as it was, it was so skilfully ar- ranged as to have plenty of comfort and even cosiness. If one could not walk up and down there and compose immortal works of genius, it surely would be simply his own fault. Palaces of lesser size were not to be had, or at least accommodations in them suited to a small family. I had prepared myself to put up with a certain amount of gloom in consideration of historic grandeur, but even this sacrifice was not permitted. The apartments were all very large and expensive, and, furthermore, would be let only for a term of years. I was directed to the 3 TO A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE Palazzo Altemps, one of the gray old sort, with heavily barred windows, ancient statuary, and staircase disap- pearing under a cavernous arch, with a "Hark! from the tombs " effect. There was nothing, th.Q portiere^ or janitor, had nothing, nor did he even know of anything elsewhere. (This was one of the unpromising features, the way people, friends and all, rarely knew of any- thing.) But stay! yes, he did, and he would have pi- loted me into a respectable dark alley, where, he said, there was a flat of six rooms, on an inner court. At Bernini's Palazzo Odescalchi, a colossal doorkeeper, in blue livery, conducted me to a business office, on the lower floor, where a bustling young administrator told me he had nothing but an apartment on the second story for 5,000 francs, or $1,000 a year. The only thing I recollect in the department of palaces was a dark ap- pendage of the Palazzo Borghese, in a back street near the river. At first sight of its entrance, with two big brass knockers and without a conciei'ge^ you would have said, " Here is a quiet, small, studio sort of building which may be made to serve; " but it developed, as you went on and upward, into fourteen chambers and two terraces. It remained nearly as dark within as without, and it had not a single fireplace, which might be taken either as an indication that the winters were very mild, or that the usual inmates did not mind cold. In the Forum of Trajan they were making over a modern building, and eight rooms on the third floor were 900 francs. The afternoon shadows of the broken columns of the Forum were falling westward to the left hand, which showed that the house faced due north. The square, moreover, seemed too stirring, scrambling, and noisy; it did not pay the least attention to the ruins SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY 31I in its midst. How many streets I traversed looking longingly at the southern exposures! In vain: others had been there before me. You know that in Italy, if the sun does not come into your house, the doctor must. But it is hardly reasonable to expect that the inhabi- tants should have kept their best locations free for the convenience of a desultory traveller. Do we not all know of persons at home, who have waited even for years for some desirable house, and who, when they have secured it, hold on to it thereafter with a ceaseless jealousy of vigilance? In the wide piazza of St. Peter's, north again! If you had felt like clambering up to the fifth story of a good large house, stuccoed and yellow-washed, you could have had six rooms for a monthly rental of 90 francs. This was proportionately dearer than at Paris. The staircase was marble, wide, bright, and easy, but not very clean, and a janitor worked at shoemaking in a varnished pine box at the foot. It is true that the rear windows must have got some southern sunshine, as the front faced north, but these were in only the minor chambers, and opened above a large court where much washing hung out. They had also a glimpse of green Mount Janiculus. Fancy having a view of Mount Ja- niculus from one of your windows, and the soft, beau- tiful grandeur of St. Peter's from another! I need not dwell upon this. I might make a similar exclamation almost everywhere, for each separate quarter had its monument of world-wide fame which irresistibly became a centre for the quest. Not to yield to any mere preju- dice, I even tried the vicinity of the Colosseum. The Colosseum closed in one end of the street, and an om- nibus passed the door for St. John Lateran. Though 312 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE the houses were new and good, their interior finish was rude and harsh and the rooms were few in number. They were such as might be adapted to superior work- ing-men or minor clerks. Then, at last, I sought the freshly built parts of Rome in which people were said to have ruined themselves. I went from the Dan of Porta Pia to the Beersheba of Prati di Castello, from the Land's End of St. John Lateran to the John O' Groat's of the Villa Ludovisi. I say nothing against the twelve-room apartment in the pink and yellow six-story house, on the Via Principe Amadeo, except that it was twice too big for us, and that it was 3,000 francs. The royal House of Savoy has been honored by giving the name of each of its mem- bers to a wide, trim, vacant, characterless street, here on the resuscitated Esquiline. I ruled out entirely the abandoned, roofless, and doorless dwellings — which, after all, were very few. However cheap they might be in themselves, they surely were not practicable for just such a family as ours. "Why do you not go to the Villa Ludovisi?" was a question that had been often asked me, and to the Villa Ludovisi I went, as I have said. It is in the north part of the town, back of Hawthorne's famous church, the Cappuccini. It was once the garden of Sallust, and then a seventeenth-century villa, with a famous collec- tion of pictures and statues. The region was all a dusty chaos of preparations. The clink of the mason's ham- mer and the pitfall of mortar-beds were on every hand. It was all as ugly as possible, and it was not even cheap ! In the first place, there were scarce any bills out; and in the next place, if you found, say, a mezzanino — the French entresol^ or half-story — in some huge, windy, SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY 313 granite tenement house, it was straightway 170 francs a month. The Prati di Castello was worse yet, for there they asked just as much, for the same number of rooms — eight — in the same kind of a house, but on the top story instead. Surely demand had again overtaken supply, or else the prices had been so forced up in Rome that people could not afford to come down again, even when they were ruined. You cross to that side of the Tiber by crude iron truss bridges that make a grievous contrast to the rich old bridge of St. Angelo, covered with its statues. The banks of the Tiber look as if a new sack by Alaric or the Constable of Bourbon were going on, and the re- construction is worse than the demolition. It would be childish to object to much-needed reforms which let in light and air, sanitation and convenience ; but what is truly regrettable is that these should be presided over by some influence wholly at war with the great and beautiful traditions of the past. Whence comes this latter-day design, this poor, thin, cold, ephemeral archi- tecture, with scarce a string course, and without a deep shadow or a sky-hne? It produces rows of monoto- nous, factory-like, stuccoed buildings, riddled with small windows, and cold, bare streets and squares without a single ray of interest. Wherever the style first comes from, it is curious to note the wide extension it gets, for this is the same sort of thing you see at present in Madrid and such large provincial cities of France as Lyons and Marseilles. One is half driven to the con- clusion that the Latin temperament is in full reaction against its past, and that it has been old and artistic so long that it now takes a perverse pleasure in being new and ugly. Rome might be justly compared to a pretty 314 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE woman ignorant of her own principal point of charm, and trying hard to suppress it. Rome, being above all other things ancient, seems to pride herself above all other things on being modern. No, we did not see on Palatinus the white porch of our home, and we did not speak, on terms that were to become those of daily companionship, to the noble river that rolls by the walls of Rome. We had been prepared to stand a considerable advance in price, to allow our- selves the luxury of living in Rome. I think we might have taken a small apartment on the fine Via Nazionale that had been a bachelor senator's, if we could have fitted it. I was told, however, that even the society, the foreign society in Rome was no longer what it used to be, in the days of tradition. People do not find Rome '' the city of the soul " to the same extent as for- merly ; they come and stay a short time as sight-seers, and move on to live somewhere else. The place I liked best of all, which was also the near- est within our means, was one in front of the glorious Campidoglio. It looked out on the two great staircases — the one at the left leading to the old brick church of Aracoeli ; the central one to the colossal Dioscuri mas- tering their horses, thoughtful Marcus A.urelius on his charger, and Michael Angelo's Capitol, that treasure- house of ancient sculpture. I had had a large photo- graph of that scene on my walls nearly all my life, and I should have been glad to make a living reality of it. On that oldest hill of Rome, with all the rest, you found bright painters' bits, as the officers of the Guardia Civile lounging in the angles of Aracoeli, and, going on a step, you contrasted the old red brick of the church against the chief district of the classic ruins below, and SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY 315 the prospect of the distant blue Alban Mountains. The place seemed to combine everything. It even made the first provision that had offered for the infant son, in the little street that zigzagged up hill and became a pretty park, near to all that is still left of the Tarpeian Rock. There was no bill out on that apartment, but I had got in the way, by that time, of applying even at places where there were no bills out. But what think you now ? the apartment could not be seen, I could judge of it only by hearsay, and it would not be vacant before October, and perhaps not even then. CHAPTER XXVI VENICE I HAD at no time thought of going any farther south than Rome. Inclement north winds pursue you in win- ter even to Capri and Palermo. If you took up your abode in the fascinating island of Capri, you might find yourself cut off from the mainland by raging gales for a week at a time. You have to go down as far as Ca- tania, on the slopes of Etna, to be really comfortable in winter, and that was much too far. By that time, you are well on your way to Malta and Egypt, and, if climate be the chief object, you might as well continue yet further. So I turned northward again. I shall only say of Siena, where there is usually some English colony, that the people I had chanced to know who had tried it spoke in an aggrieved way of its penetrating cold and damp- ness. That this cannot logically be given as a sufficient objection will be seen later on, but for the moment it was sufficient. Perugia I crossed off at once. If we were to be led to pedestrianize to the other Umbrian towns round about, — of which there is so taking a view from the chief piazza — we could never endure, on each occa- sion, to have to descend and ascend again, by the glar- ing road, that interminable hill. Of the town, too, and the sitting statue of Pope Julius, it is rather the beau- 316 317 tiful genius of Hawthorne that has made them, than they themselves. There was a quaint incident in prog- ress at the time, making what was possibly an unusual stir of life. The carabinieri had killed the dog of an innocent fellow, in the belief that the animal was mad, and the owner, having no journal at his command, was distributing printed handbills all over town to vin- dicate the memory of his dog and bring opprobrium upon the ruthless slayers. Florence is another of those places which are sup- posed to have been ruined by the royal court. A period of over-inflation was caused by the coming of the court, which collapsed on its departure to Rome. Such is the story, and you are constantly hearing that you can have lodgings there for a song; you would almost think it was a sort of Tadmor of the wilderness. But observe that the court departed for Rome some twenty years ago, and there has been plenty of time since for things to equalize themselves. Florence is certainly cheaper than Rome, but the cheapness is relative, after all. The population do not flock in mass to put their dwell- ings at your disposition, as the unsophisticated may suppose, and to beg you to take them at any price. If I should detail all my experiences there, it would make a long catalogue, but I saw no real bargains such as I have had occasion to mention in several of the French towns. And yet how more than ever relative it is, when you think of all the different tastes and requirements! I am aware that it is quite inexcusable to put our own so much in the foreground. It is one problem if you want to have the Uffizi, the Duomo, and the Academy, that contains Michael Angelo's David, within easy reach, and quite another thing if you have seen the great gal- 3l8 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE leries about enough, and are almost to be satisfied with climate alone. English influence is apparent in Florence. It is re- called to you by the three churches, and by the racing- shells you see dart out occasionally from the arches of the Ponte Vecchio. There is a bright spruceness about the approaches to some of the apartments. More care seems given to "modern conveniences" than in Rome; fixed bath-tubs are not wholly unknown, and kitchens are often at the top of the house, to let off the smoke and odors inoffensively. The villino at Florence sup- plies to a small extent the call for detached houses. On the Viale, the boulevard around the town, and vari- ous other broad avenues it crosses, are places so de- voted to villinos^ in their shady dooryards, that you might half fancy yourself in New Haven or Cleveland. The villinos are occasionally arranged for two families, and the proprietor often desired to remain below and keep the garden to himself. One of them would not receive a child on any terms, not even the most winning, tranquil, and exceptional one on the face of the earth. It was our very first hint of such limitations. Would it ever be credited when I should report it back at the Villa des Amandiers? would there be Junonian wrath, maternal scorn and resentment ? I should rather think so. American influence, of course, is counted in with the English, in Florence, though here too the permanent colony does not seem to be what it has been in other days. To sum up, a fairish apartment would cost from 1,200 to 1,800 francs a year, a figure for which you could make yourself very much more comfortable in or about Nice. At those prices, you could either be lo- FLORENCE, SIENA, PERUGIA, AND VENICE 319 cated remote from the centre, in the Via Montebello. near the public gardens, or in a part of a villino by the Mugnone, a little tributary of the Arno, or, centrally, on a fourth story in the handsome Via Cavour. A first story in the same Via Cavour was 2,800 francs. It is true that it had an escutcheon over the doorway, and sixteen rooms, of which two were kitchens. It was hard to see why there should be two kitchens, especially in these days when Mr. Edward Atkinson, with his Aladdin oven, promises to spare us the need even of one, but so it was. Turning to the country, I did not find it so pleasing in vegetation, and, what was stranger yet, I did not find it a whit more Italian than what I had left behind me. How often is one driven to think that it is the Riviera which is the true Italy! That warm, sunny zone cor- responds more nearly than any other to the enthusiastic descriptions of travellers and poets, and has fixed our conceptions of what Italy should be. The view of Nice from the Col de Villefranche seemed to me finer than that of Florence from Fiesole. The climb to Fiesole is much like that from Nice to Cimiez, only longer, steeper, dustier, and the roadway is far more shut in between indefensibly high walls. When Boccaccio and his friends were weaving their tales, at the Earl of Craw- ford's villa, on this road, they could not have wanted to go into Florence very often, even apart from the great plague, unless they had excellent horses. When the lofty village is reached, it is a steep climb again to the point of view, at the Franciscan monastery. Surely the stars in their courses were fighting to re- tain us at the Villa des Amandiers. It is replied to those who lament the difficulty of getting literary fame, 320 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE that, if it were not difficult, it would not be fame. So, I suppose, if it were not so difficult to find in the storied lands of Europe, or anywhere else, an inexpensive home with sufficient charm to almost defy wealth and luxury, it could not be half so much appreciated when found. It would be a defeat of the "Haves" by the "Have- nots," a reversal of the laws of political economy which prevail on one side of the ocean as well as on the other. It has been abundantly seen, by this time, that the ob- ject was to be attained only by long and arduous labor, aided too by very good luck. There was an instructive difference in the causes, though the result — the shortage of desirable dwellings — was everywhere pretty much the same. My next important attempt was at Venice. I venture to say, you would, on general principles, have wagered on there being better chances in Venice than anywhere else — in old Venice, mouldering on its miles of labyrinthine canals, the city that had once had 200,000 people, and then dwindled to 96,000, But go house-hunting there, and you will find, with unwelcome surprise, that it has perhaps fewest openings of all. Apart from the liberal provision of dear furnished lodgings for the strangers who come to pass a month or two in the spring and autumn, there is very little to choose from. Nor is this any mere fiction of interested house-agents. Venice has got back now a population of about 140,000, and, allowing for the buildings that have disappeared in the mean time, is none too large for her inhabitants. Her day of prosperity has returned. Her position as a chief port of the new kingdom of Italy, the revival of a natural commercial advantage, and other favoring conditions have made her a great shipping mart, a manu- FLORENCE, SIENA, PERUGIA, AND VENICE 32 1 facturing town, and a popular bathing-resort. It has a decidedly American ring when people cite to you the manufacturing concerns that have lately moved here, and the number of hands each employs. The Grand Canal begins to take on a very commer- cial look ; large signs are out upon the palaces in a way that recalls the march of trade up Fifth Avenue, New York. A few Englishmen and Americans who pur- chased homes on this thoroughfare, years ago, unwit- tingly joined a shrewd business speculation to their choice of residence. Among such residents are the Brownings; the Rezzonico palace will be forever iden- tified with their name. No royalty whatever has nobler accommodations than Browning's son, the artist, in this palace, which is possibly kept up now with greater perfection than in its own historic day. A vast ball- room and interminable suites of reception-rooms, hung in figured silks, strike you with astonishment. Again, as before in the library I have mentioned at Rome, one wonders at the niggling taste of the American rich, at home, who will not do this grand and simple sort of thing, but lavish millions on houses like Chinese puzzle- boxes, covered with a chaos of chimney-stacks and dovecotes. Smooth beauty within contrasts with a fortress-like ruggedness without; for the palace is of an almost Cyclopean Renaissance, and not the gay, rosy Byzantine-Gothic which Ruskin and the painters have almost made our ideal of Venice. Huge embossed heads stare from the massive quoins, and the walls are so thick that a comfortable bed could easily be made up on the window-sills. I will describe two of the typical abodes I looked at in Venice, one large and one small. Everybody, at 21 322 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE first, wishes to be on the Grand Canal ; then, after a sufficient experience of it, is willing to try some of the sheltered campi or quays of the interior. The first, then, was an apartment in a large sober palace on the Grand Canal. Need I say, again, that it looked northward? It had belonged to an American consul-general, who, having given up his post elsewhere, proposed to settle in Venice, as the place that pleased him best in all the world. He had tired of it and left his apartment for rent, and it was recommended to me by a competent judge, as the most reasonable thing he knew oi in all Sibout 65 feet UA-" AN APARTMENT IN VENICE. Venice. That the tendency of rents was upward will be seen from the fact that the present price was but i, 600 francs, but it was specified in the lease that a renewal would be granted only at the rate of 1,700. The apartment was the one immediately above the piano nobile^ or principal story, and scarcely less large and lofty than that. The piano nohile itself is hardly ever let, but is kept for the proprietor. As there is also a high ground floor, devoted to water-entrance, storage FLORENCE, SIENA, PERUGIA, AND VENICE 323 of the surplus furniture of gondolas and the like, and to sleeping-chambers for the gondoliers, you have already a length of bare stone staircase to climb equal to a third or fourth story in Paris. A large antechamber, with a carved and gilded wooden altar from some old church, against one wall, opened into a great dining-room, and this in turn, on either hand, into a salon and principal bedroom, I paced the distance, and none of the three chambers varied far from thirty-six feet by twenty-one. The length of the bedroom was broken by an archway, giving a pleasant alcove. I at once opened the case- ment windows, which fitted ogival arches without. They were so high above the floor that a platform had been built to reach to them. A balcony all along the front was found to be too narrow to enter comfortably, and was intended chiefly for external ornament. " O, la bella situazione ! '' commendingly exclaimed the elderly factotum who came with me, to do the hon- ors, and it was perfectly easy to agree with him. " Cos- petto!'' he added at his leisure, which is like, "Good gracious! I should say so." I have sometimes, since then, tried to fancy our being there, shut in for want of solid land to walk on, and looking out at the rich, red, Byzantine palace and charming little house — with a bit of garden before it— across the way, and at the tramway steamers darting swiftly to the station of San Toma ; or again, in winter at the rain pelting incessantly into the leaden canal, or the snowflakes falling upon it, of the bitter winds har- rying it. I turned back to see what was in the rooms. All the floors were of the usual polished Roman cement, the doors were of some rather elegant hard wood, while the walls and ceiling had lost whatever distinction they 324 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE once had, and were covered with a cheap paper of or- dinar)' design. Three monumental stoves (for burning wood) in tiles or tinted plaster, partly took away the bareness of the rooms; and the dining-room was fur- thermore helped out by two great canvases, some twelve feet square, showing, all in tones of faded green, two ancient Palladian villas with their gardens. At the first blush, the problem of furnishing such a huge place seemed terrifying; but, on reflection, I am convinced that it need not have been. Hangings would have done everything for the vacant walls, and in our day charm- ing hangings are no longer dear. On the whole, our effects would have gone very well in there, and we should at least have been something of a protest against the Anglo-Saxon vice of over-furnishing and dreadful stuffiness. The problems of heating and lighting were more for- midable. Our lamps could have penetrated that ample gloom but little. You could hardly dine a friend under such circumstances; and the evenings at home promised to be dull, when we were not listening to the music in the piazza or taking ices at Florian's. And all that is in default just at the time of year when you would need it the most. Going back to Venice, later, in mid- winter, to verify these impressions, I found snow moun- tains high all over the piazza of St. Mark's, as in an American blizzard; the shopping thoroughfare of the Merceria was ankle-deep in slush ; and our consul told me that he had never known any other climate where the damp cold penetrated so thoroughly to his marrow as here. The southern sun came into the kitchen and some other minor rooms, at the rear, from a court. You FLORENCE, SIENA, PERUGIA, AND VENICE 325 will see no kitchen on the plan I have made. The kitchen was down a half-story, with a whole series of small rooms for which we should have had no use at all. It had only two charcoal holes for cooking, and the water must be pumped up daily from below. These half-stories are managed in the height of the larger ones; for, naturally, there is no need of all the rooms being as lofty as those in which you receive the Queen of Cyprus or the ambassadors of the Ottoman Porte. Another half-story, up, was a great, brick-floored attic which would have made a magnificent play-room for children. Higher still, on the top of the roof, is often a wooden lookout, from which you can command all the red-tiled roofs of the city, and the snowy A^enetian Alps. It is an excellent idea, for the preservation of privacy, in Venice, that they give each apartment its separate street entrance. The palace is entered on all sides, from all sorts of dark little streets. The draw- back is that all but the principal tenant are cut off from arrival by the grand water-portal, which is something in which one would naturally take a good deal of pride. I have not room for the subject of the landlords I met. One was a Parisian grande dame^ with an exceed- ingly shrewd business talent, another was a Venetian widow, who held that she did not know how to bargain, and I rather think it was so. Another was a stately ecclesiastic in silk stockings, who offered me his apart- ment, of twenty vast rooms, in absolutely neat, perfect condition, and absolutely vacant of everything, for 2, 500 francs ; but it must be taken for six years at least, and he would much prefer nine. There is a curious habit, as in Spain, of estimating rent by the day, no matter how long the period is for which you are to pay 326 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE it. I repeatedly heard rents divided up into ten francs, two francs and a half, and the like, per day. The Jewish element is strong among the landlords; it is said that one-third of the property in Venice is owned by the Jews. It would be much easier, I am sure, to imagine a pal- ace in Venice than a small private house. I had not forgotten my wish for a house apart, even in the queen city of the Adriatic, and I pursued it persistently — the more so as the apartments proved so large and cheer- 1st Scory 2nd Story 3 id Story N Salon I *- About soft.-* A SMALL HOUSE IN VENICE. less. ^' Parva domus viagna quies.'' I found something at last on the Calle della Donna Onesta that I hoped might be made to do. North again ? no, south this time. It was curiously backed up against another house at the rear, after a mediaeval fashion, so that the rear windows of two of its three chief stories were blocked. You would hardly expect the luxury of a dooryard in Venice, and there was none, but there was an alley at the right, which gave side windows. The rent was very FLORENCE, SIENA, PERUGIA, AND VENICE 327 low, but forty francs a month, which would allow us such a margin for improvements that we might make ourselves very comfortable. It was a good, wide, Dutch- looking house, of red brick, with stone string courses, a door in the middle, entered from the level, and green shutters on all the windows. A hundred yards or less separated it from the Grand Canal, and there was a rather pretty glimpse of it from the corner. It would have made a satisfactory water-color, to send home, and who of us is free from some small prompting of the vanity of wishing to impress others by our actions ? This house had absolutely no modern improvements — not a trace of one. There was no fireplace in it, but the cheap rental would have allowed us to make one and pay for plenty of fuel. All water was from a pub- lic well in the Campo San Toma, a few blocks away. The well was under lock and key most of the day, and only between seven and nine a.m. , and three and five P.M., could the servants go there, with their clinking copper buckets, and gossip around it, and form the tra- ditional genre groups. We should have used the well of course, from time to time, for the sake of the pictu- resqueness; but one of my first steps was to go to the office of the water company, at the Traghetto San Bene- detto, and see what the good aqiiadotto water, from the Brenta, would be put in for. I found the expense was not great. Nor would the expense have been great for the gas, as its pipes almost passed the door. There is a pleasant incongruity in talk of putting in gas and water, in Venice, but as romantic things may become almost commonplace by too long familiarity, so even the commonplace things of life abroad take on a cer- tain romance. 328 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE I would have embellished the ground floor, all one large, bare, dampish room, where we never would have had to stay, with warm pink color, and some bold, cheap hangings. Its pavement was broken red marble. After having first been something better, it had been a baker's shop, I think, for I discovered an oven at the back. I would have put a brass knocker on the green entrance- door, something artistic, from over among the makers of gondola-fittings, on the other side, and it would have been becoming and Venetian to have some lemon yellow in the window curtains, by the green shutters. A good platform staircase led up to the various stories, and the corridor was of a pleasant, country-like width. As the kitchen was in the top of the house, we should have made our dining-room next it. There were no existing traditions as to arrangement, and we could have divided up the rooms to suit ourselves. We should have had a boat of our own, and kept the oars and awning in the vacant entrance story. We should sometimes have rowed to the Rialto, which was but a short distance away, and brought back our own marketing. There was always a great display of provisions at the Rialto, and I was told, by an informant of experience, that no- where else in the world could one live so cheaply as in Venice. The wondrous Archives and the Academy of Fine Arts were but a few steps distant; and we had only to go to the ferry, close by, to be set down in ten minutes by the tram-boats, at the piazza of St. Mark's. All the rich opportunities of Venice, in pictures, libra- ries, " subjects, " and the cosmopolitan people who came there, were near at hand. And in our own house, too, ''away from the pulling and the hauling," we should have enjoyed in an especial manner the great water city FLORENCE, SIENA, PERUGIA, AND VENICE 329 where not even the rattle of a single cab ever breaks the silence. Well, we did not do it. Would not the baby, D , have fallen into the canal before our door? Were the bad smells, from the tide in the canals and all the things floating in them, really as harmless as their apologists maintained ? Would the enervating lassitude of the long period of summer heat yield to habit, or, if not, what considerable part of our income should we spend elsewhere in avoiding it ? And should we escape ** the pulling and the hauling," after all? The last I saw of our fancied home, I looked back upon a convention of bareheaded mothers in Israel and urchins, from the dense neighborhood of the School of San Rocco gathered be- fore it, and those Roccoco urchins were wrangling in its very doorway, over some fish they had just hooked up out of our tributary canal. CHAPTER XXVII SIX MONTHS IN A PALAZZINA AT VERONA All was duly noted down for final reference — and the question settled itself within half a day after leav- ing Venice. Verona was en route^ and Verona was a charming provincial city where I had once passed some time. This visit was meant to be one of reminiscence and sen- timent, yet there used to be a house there where I fan- cied I should like to live, and I went to see it. There is now a brisk stir of modern life in the city of Romeo and Juliet. The approach to the house, on the hill of San Lorenzo, under the white Austrian forts, had been cut across meantime by a new railway to Lake Garda, and besides, there was no sign now — any more than be- fore — that the house was to let. But there was another, so quaint and original, so charmingly situated, and, with all the rest, so fascinatingly cheap, that it seemed hardly possible to hesitate. It was the Palazzina Giusti, on an upper terrace of the large garden of the same name, which travellers visit, as one of the specta- cles of the interesting town. You have only to look in Baedeker to learn something of the garden. A mention of it has even crept into that rhetorical tale, Guy Liv- ingstone. "The cypresses in the trim old garden," says the book, " soaring skyward till the eyes that follow grow 330 SIX MONTHS IN A PALA2ZINA AT VERONA 33 1 dizzy, — the trees that were green and luxuriant years before the world was redeemed." There is a stump of one of these cypresses that dates back fourteen hundred years, and there are a great number of four or five hundred years old. The Palazzina dominated a stretch of ancient parterres and statuary, and the stairway climbed to it through an alley of the venerable cypresses and disappeared in the mouth of an enormous head, cut out of the solid rock. On the other side, its exit and practical gate for every-day use was on a street that had once been a pilgrimage way to some holy church, while beyond, close by, passed the old brick city wall, with a basis from the time of the Ro- mans, and scars upon its battlements from all the con- flicts of the Middle Ages. Verona was our walled town par excellence^ which went far to still the craving for that peculiar sort of gratification. The ruddy notch-battle- mented walls, with a quiet green promenade inside, ran up hill and down dale in the most taking way, and, quite superannuated though they now are, sentry-posts of bersaglieri still mount guard by the towers. The pavilion seemed even more attractive to me than the main palace of the Counts Giusti, below. " Palaz- zina " again would sound well at a distance. I asked the amiable gardener below if it were habitable. Yes, he said, lifting one arm toward it with a compre- hensive gesture we were to see him much employ, later, as he directed inquiring friends where to find us, the widow of a German officer and two daughters had oc- cupied it lately, and had only left it because the healthy situation had given them such appetites, Signore, such an over-florid robustness that they were actually obliged to go away in self-defence. 332 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE This unique credential was hardly necessary, at least the house was habitable. Returning to our home at Villefranche-sur-Mer, by way of Turin and then a pass over the little-travelled Alpes Maritimes, it was a whiff o/ the breath of orange blossoms, coming up the valley, six or eight miles above Ventimiglia, that first gave the new conclusion pause. It was the land of Mignon's song once more, and its potent charm promised to be but the stronger for the brief season of absence. The Villa des Amandiers was at its best. The shadow of the cliff no longer fell upon the long walk, except in a measure most agreeable for shade. The wild flowers that had sprung there in the winter had now given place to a new series, to iris, narcissus, poppy, prim- rose, and crocus. Each kind lasts a long time, for there is no sudden forcing out in that climate, by fierce heat, and as sudden drying up. Our farmer was grafting orange buds on a wild stock. Sometimes, to issue forth in the fresh morning, and see the opening blossoms, seemed worth far more than all the antiquities of Rome. Cherry-time was at hand. We had bought a horse, to jog about the pleasant country, and had meant to ex- plore, that summer, the small Alpine resorts to which many of the well-to-do of Nice retire, as San Dalmazzo, Saint-Martin-Lantosque, and Berthemont. The winter hardships were all over, and the long, pleasant season for dining on our terrace was before us. Why move at all ? We summed up Rome, Venice, Florence and the rest, and decided that they were places to go to only as travellers and we were within easy striking distance of them all. We decided to remain, only saying that we must seek SIX MONTHS IN A PALAZZINA AT VERONA 333 another location for winter, where we could have the sun to his very latest ray, which is by no means easy to find. But hardly was this decision entirely settled when the opposite one was precipitated by an untoward cir- cumstance. The rift in our lute, the drawback and latent threat in our situation, all along, had been the little abode that stood vacant on our terrace, opposite our door. It was never meant to be occupied except by inmates of the large villa, or by some one agreeable to them. I had ornamented it as part of our general motif. It had had such tenants, I have said, as an artist known to fame, a picturesque old abbe, and a young officer of chasseurs^ and we were hoping for other such. But, with- out warning or redress, the agent suddenly popped into a. numerous peasant-like family, to pass the summer. It was not the fault of these worthy neighbors if they conducted all their domestic operations on the terrace: they could hardly do otherwise; there was no room for them inside. They used to invite the hostlers and care- takers of the Commandant, who had by this time gone away with his troop to the mountains, to festivities and merriment which would surely have been innocent enough could they only have been indulged in half a mile away. We could not enter into a competition with them in trampling down the grass, for it was ours; nor in clamor, nor in casting out vegetable-parings, which would very likely have been taken only as a sign of pleasant sociability. There was nothing for it but to beat a retreat. First, I had to get a certificate of change of residence from the mayor of our commune, setting forth that I would take with me to Verona my household effects, as 334 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE per a detailed list annexed, that they might not have to pay duty. This was next legalized by the name and seal of the Italian consul-general at Nice. We got up at daybreak, one morning, the villa was dismantled, and everything was on board the train by eleven o'clock, and our car sealed up with a lead seal. It cost about twenty-five dollars for the things, on the "car-load" plan, and the transportation took nine days, which we passed in a little journey. Thus ended the pleasant chapter of life at the Villa des Amandiers. Arrived in Verona, I presented myself, with a proper sponsor, at the stately city hall, opposite the Roman amphitheatre, the grand guardhouse of old Venetian rule, and the battlemented gate of the Visconti. I fur- nished the mayor's assistant with numerous particulars about myself and family, which were duly recorded, and we were granted permission to make our domicile in Verona. I then proceeded with my papers to the custom-house, which was in a suppressed convent, next the old brick-and-marble church of San Fermo. I trans- lated into Italian in full the list of my effects, swore, signed, countersigned, duplicated and reduplicated doc- uments, then hurried away for more of the same thing at the branch custom-house in the railway station, and was finally able to take my goods away from the latter, just at the closing hour of three. One of the amusing features of the hegira was the transformation our name underwent in the various doc- uments, of which I have kept a collection. A common form of it was "Bisoph," to which I was already well used. But generally a family name was not deemed necessary, or else it was indistinguishably mixed up with the others. Thus I was often " Signor William SIX MONTHS IN A PALAZZINA AT VERONA 335 Henry," or simply "William," or, again, " Villiam En- rico." One's ancestors enter into the transaction, and, having had to give my father's name and my mother's, I found the former curiously attached to mine in the extreme form of evolution, Signor "Bishop d'Elias. " Surely a very pretty distance that from the original — with an idea in it for such as are anxious to secure high- sounding pedigrees, which would have the sanction of official documents. I suppose there was hardly ever a greater tugging, straining, and swearing, since the hauling of war mate- rial to the battlements for those tyrant princes the Sca- Via Scala Szxnten C Street) Terrace | about 25ft l'^* O ^v ^. I ' ■ fc . ^ ■■ ■i ll i l x^ Main Story Upper ^tory THE PALAZZINA GIUSTI. ligers or Theodoric the Great, than in getting our two bulky drayloads of effects up the steep incline and along the secluded grass-grown lane to our gateway. The ancient fortifications closed in one side, and garden walls, almost as lofty, the other. At one place, there even had to be a partial unloading; an old arch, sprung across the way at an awkward angle, seemed to bar it entirely, and its abutments were passed only by a hair's- breadth. It was the 24th of July, and though I had been in- clined to think this new post of ours, on its bold foot- $$6 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE hill, with grand snow mountains in sight over toward Lake Garda and in all the views northward, could not be warmer than what we had left behind, how hot, how very hot it was, with a heat of a totally different quality ! We were deposited, with all our belongings, upon our large brick terrace, and left to the task of settling the house ! Our welcome privacy here was purchased some- what at the expense of the refreshing currents of air we needed. A very high rear wall was a veritable rever- beratory of heat. An awning was soon stretched over the terrace, but it was a large space to cover, and the awning was always being thrown out of gear, or split and carried away by thunderstorms. But the delightful prospect should be and almost was compensation enough. All Verona, every ruddy tower and church spire, was constantly under our eyes, to be studied and made familiar at our leisure; all the wind- ings of the Adige; all the pretty villages; and, beyond them, Mantua and other cities of the plain that, later, were to be a theatre for our wanderings. And beneath our parapet, as if the principal pasture for our eyes, the labyrinths, statues, and parterres of the Giusti garden which had brought us there, were not quite enough, a part of the immediate foreground was a convent gar- den, to which the nuns, in a pretty costume of blue and gray, used to come for recreation, and to till the ground, and where they used to chatter and make merry like a flock of sparrows. The lower floor of the Palazzina was comprised all in one fine, large room, which was used both as salon and dining-room — when we did not dine upon our terrace, which I must concede was here but seldom. The story above contained a large hall and four rooms, of SIX MONTHS IN A PALAZZINA AT VERONA 337 one of which we made a cosey sitting-room and study. It had a curious, ancient, goblin-like little iron stove; but in winter, this proving insufficient, the proprietor replaced it with a prodigious stove of brick and mortar, which took six men to bring it up from the palace be- low. It was a good deal like moving a chimney. A mason spent half a day in plastering up its crevices. We had a similar one in the salon, and both of them burned wood, at two francs the hundred-weight. The kitchen, a small building by itself, was across the terrace. It had a very wide Dutch window that would have greatly pleased a painter, and into the metal grating that protected it all Verona was wrought like a pattern of tapestry. The cooking was done here by means of crane and tripods, over fagOts, on a broad hearth, of precisely the kind at which we see Cinde- rella in the picture. Contrary to expectations, house- keeper S found much good in these primitive ap- pliances, and said that the wood made a readier and hotter fire than coal. The servant question naturally pressed for immediate solution. A stately sort of woman, in Spanish man- tilla, who had been employed by the Franceschine nuns below, came to seek the place. She was totally inca- pable of comprehending that we could not wait for her for ten days. What was to become of us in the mean time was no affair of hers; the important thing was that she wanted the place and would take it in ten days. A certain " Giacinta " was then secured to come in by the day for the cooking and heavy work. She was a stout, smiling, willing girl, faithful according to her lights, but easy-going and shiftless to a degree. She had most extraordinary equanimity of temper; with her every- 23 338 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE thing was always well. The amount of wages seemed to give her no concern; no rivalry upset her; no extra demands, no tugging of heavy supplies up from the market, ever appeared to her inconvenient or inoppor- tune. Next, we got for nurse-maid a thin, blonde, German-looking girl, from the province of Mantua, rather cross-grained and moody, but more efficient than the other. Upon her trunk when she came was neatly lettered, by some accomplished friend, " La Gentilissima SigJiorina Melania So-and-so." Melania's pay was ten francs a month with board, and Giacinta's was twenty, without. These were the ruling prices; nothing ex- ceptional about them except, strange as it may seem, they were liberal. We knew of some well-to-do fami- lies where there was more work, heavy washing and the like, and the pay was less. The ladies of Verona like to complain of their servants, as ladies do the world over, and it appears that paragons are not produced even on this primitive rate of wages. The custom is, if .either party be dissatisfied, to give eight days' notice, or this may be commuted, on the employer's side, by eight days' pay. Keeping house again in a new language was a con- siderable part of the opening trials; and, as usual, it was not even a language we had to deal with, but a dia- lect, and two dialects, one for each province repre- sented. We were sometimes brought from the market sausage for salad, and cheese for ice. Once Melania, having had a violent quarrel in the kitchen, came to us to hand in her resignation. We were serenely uncon- scious of what she said, and she, nonplussed by seeing day after day go by without our knowing that she was go- ing to leave, seemed to feel driven, in despair, to remain. SIX MONTHS IN A PALAZZINA AT VERONA 339 We were rather far from the most advantageous mar- keting; that is, from the central market in the Piazza delle Erbe, where the quaint medieval surroundings seemed all arranged for picturesque effect rather than business. But nothing in Verona was dear as compared to late experiences. From a few items judge all — ex pede Herculem. Eggs were but fifteen sous (cents) a dozen, milk was four sous a litre, and the best filet of beef three francs a kilo — two and one-fifth pounds — as against five francs in France. The meat, which had been a constant problem in France, was here always tender and good. How forbear grateful recollection of the thick, juicy mutton-chops, at less than half the price at Nice, even if they could ever have been had at Nice at all ? This, again, may be only matter of individual experience, but I have never seen elsewhere such de- licious mutton. The sheep too were a delight to the eye, feeding in pastoral groups on the wide stretch of greensward, that continues the glacis of the fortifica- tions around the city. A " fixed-price " system was ap- plied more or less, even in the market; so that on a pile of fine tomatoes you would see a placard with the words " two sous a kilo," the same on the potatoes and other things; and the fixed price is a great stimulus to confidence. I have not yet stated the rent of the Palazzina — thirty francs a month. What with the expense of moving and the rest, it could not be counted at that for the first year, but, after a first year, it practically amounted to the abolition of rent. With a house and two servants complete for sixty francs a month, the problem of liv- ing ^ifes about solved. Was not this last word of cheapness a more aesthetic and rational plan than even 340 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE Thoreau's? And what surroundings! You could go down to Verona and get books. Besides the excellent public library, there was another at a pleasant literary club, founded as early as 1808. One was isolated from nothing important, either ancient or modern, in this fine city, of between sixty and seventy thousand people. In the first realization of this, when our preliminary diffi- culties were somewhat settled it seemed warrantable to exclaim: " O, let us stay here forever! Let us master Italian till we speak it as well as they! We will go back to America for an occasional visit, but let us roam no more; let this be our permanent home! " A grand apartment, with frescoes in the style of the old masters, could be had, down in a wing of the Giusti palace, if one preferred, for about 1,200 francs a year. For what would be a very modest scale of expense in America, one could here keep horses and live like a sort of Sar- danapalus. It was the sound commercial plan of mak- ing the most of one's means, by reducing his divisor if he cannot increase his dividend. Nothing is more phil- osophical than to bring down the cost of the necessi- ties of life as low as possible, to have the more for its superfluities, out of which our principal pleasures are derived. It is true that the full enjoyment of the Giusti gar- den was not included in our price named; on the con- trary, for that we were asked a sum equal to twice and a half our house-rent. We arranged a sort of modus Vivendi with a great reduction upon this demand ; but the question was never entirely settled, and would have been open to negotiation, had we stayed. Our doors gave eastward upon a fine portico with light stone columns and grotesque heads in the keystones of the arches, which SIX MONTHS IN A PALAZZINA AT VERONA 34I laughed down upon us. They had seen worse trials than ours, I dare say, in their three hundred years of gayety. They had seen, among others, that young nobleman who fled from the machinations of Eugene Beauharnais, when Napoleon's viceroy in Italy, and concealed himself in the cavernous cisterns under our terrace, where his food was let down to him by friends, through the ancient well-curb. The portico gave upon the upper walk of the garden, planted mainly in the natural style, in contrast with the geometry of Le Notre below. What charming prome- nades we had amid the graceful laurels, acacias, and sempre-verde of many patterns, in this our principal re- treat! How merrily the baby D ■ used to run round the catalpa tree just before the door, to warm his blood, on the frosty autumn mornings! How warily would he shun the edge of the precipice guarded by a hedge of May roses! And how truly, then lisping his first ac- cents of speech, in a foreign tongue, he summed up the winsome prospect in his constant " Guar da che bella ! " — see, how lovely ! I cannot say just how old the Palazzina was,' but I had one of those marriage-books such as are still printed in Italy, which commemorated the marriage of a Count Giusti, in the year 1620, and this gave a little account of it. It was in the form of a dialogue be- tween a stranger, Forestiero^ and a citizen, Cittadino^ who had undertaken to show the former the property of a cavalier " esteemed the glory of the nobility and the pattern of every grace and virtue. " After having visited the palace and main part of the gardens, they arrive at the upper level. " Forestiero. Is it not drawing near time to return ? 342 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE " Cittadino. First let us look at the delights of the palazzina. . . . Here flourishes a second garden. . . . Yonder figs are of such look and flavor that one would take them rather for ambrosia of the gods than mortal fruits. Here are the fragrant salvia, the cooling mint, the valued rosemary, as well also as the cinara, either neglected by the ancients or unknown to them. . . . And now let us enjoy the grand prospect from the pa- lazzina itself. " Forestiero. Fine chambers these, truly ; wondrously provided with every ornament and comfort. But what well is this I see on the inner terrace? How can water ever be raised to such a height? " Cittadino. This entire terrace is vaulted beneath, so as to hold a great supply of rain-water, which is dis- tributed at will to the fountains below. So fair and dainty are they, that they disdain to receive water from any other source than, in this way, from heaven direct. " Forestiero. This height is certainly nothing less than Mount Pindar. Here laurel abounds on every side, and the Muses sport with Apollo. The flowers parallel the stars of heaven, except that they have the great advantage of being of a thousand colors, while the stars are but of one. . . . Oh, happy he, who, far from care, may breathe this excellent air, and, 'neath this time-honored shade, go quietly weaving his verse, in which apt rhym.es and noble thought must sure be worthy of the scene around ! " Why then did we not stay ? Why are we not still at the Palazzina Giusti ? I fear I can give but insufficient reasons. The novelty of such an experience somewhat wears off in time; there are moods in which you would SIX MONTHS IN A PALAZZINA AT VERONA 343 scarce look more at the rich Byzantine-Gothic churches of San Zeno or Santa Anastasia than some backwoods meeting-house. We were high and secure above all the outer world, but the deserted streets by which we as- cended ran in part through a poor quarter and were often neglected and malodorous. The municipality would send and clean them at times, but did not seem able to keep it up. If one should persist in an old- fashioned New England squeamishness, of course he could not travel in Europe at all, but, even so, he must draw the line somewhere. Then, I shall have to speak of climate again, — end- less gossip de la pluie et du bean teinps^ perhaps you will say. At first it was hot, hot, suffocating, unendurable. We were even alarmed at the uncompromising fierceness of the heat, and went away and passed most of the month of August at Bosco Chiesanuova. It was a mountain village devoid of most all conveniences, but amusing in a certain way, and beginning to be a sum- mer-resort for a few residents of Verona who felt the need of any such thing. CHAPTER XXVIII WOULD YOU SUMMER AT BOSCO CHIESANUOVA ? But let me dwell a moment upon this same Bosco Chiesanuova. It was an amusing little place in spite of itself. The inns defied all ideas of modern comfort, furnished a. cm'si7ie consisting entirely of veal in various forms, and this served in a half-bedlamite way ; and yet entertained some distinguished guests. One lady, wife of a leading Italian general, went away with her husband presently to pay a visit to the royal family at Monza, and yet while here showed no evidence of discontent with the primitive accommodations. All was taken with a happy- go-lucky ease or dignified apathy, as if it were either of no consequence or of no use to complain. She had a palace down at Verona, with armed guards pacing before it, but here the shabby little albergo seemed to do just as well. There was a duchess, who occupied for the summer a large, barn-like stone house, into which she had not put a single ornament, not a single bright touch of drapery. She had some rooms to rent in another house, and we were recommended to look at them, if not satisfied with our own, but these were positively squalid and repulsive. If such be the character of Italian duchesses, improvement in certain directions is much to be desired. On the same duchess's terrace, however, was given 344 WOULD YOU SUMMER AT BOSCO CHIESANUOVA ? 345 one evening a very pretty fete. Garlands of greenery with lanterns on light poles were hung in a complete circle around a magnificent old tree. A long table be- neath glittered with all sorts of knick-knacks, prepared for a tombola by young women of the house and a gay group of girls over from the hotels. You drew numbers and got absurd prizes, and the young women laughed, romped, and danced, always under the eye of their chaperons, in the merriest fashion. They used to dance, too, in a vacant dining-room of the hotel and play another sort of tombola^ and also Mercante al Feria^ which is our game of Auction Pitch. It was half like being in America again. We were at Tinazzi's inn. Tinazzi was a character; and if he were the only one in the place, I would de- scribe him in full, but perhaps it would be unfair dis- crimination. He put us in, at first, a bill of the kind that takes your breath away, but, when we protested, at once wheeled round to the other side. Calling up Mrs. Tinazzi, who had undoubtedly made it out under his own direction — "These are altri prezzi — other prices — "he cried; "it's all sbagliato — all mixed up. These are other prices ; do you understand ? What do you mean by it ? " He even turned upon me an indignant glance. " Great heavens!" it seemed to say, "you don't suppose I ever meant you. to pay any such prices as these, do you?" One would have thought some interloper had got in and mysteriously made the bill unknown to him. Tinazzi repudiated it utterly, and I did not have to pay more than a third of the amount originally demanded. The bells used to ring with an infernal din, half an hour at a stretch and many times a day. There seemed 346 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE to be always a fete or a church service. The natives delighted in it about as savages would delight in the beating of their tom-toms. It could be heard for miles away in the secluded valleys, and it was probably a satisfaction to them that the neighbors knew something was going on there. It had just one redeeming feature, but a great one. A lovely young countess used to come to some of the services, a slight distraction for her in the absence of others. She passed by with an undulating, goddess-like tread, " bodiced like a lily," tasteful and fresh in her attire as a flower after rain. Sometimes she would walk with her father, again with a group of younger men, some clad in remarkable plaids, and one in Tyro- lean feathers and leggings, but all a thousand miles from herself in distinction. You could hardly help weaving romances about her. What would be the fate of this beautiful girl ? Should she marry into even royal station, it would seem no more than her right, and she could find but few rivals there. Such a waist! such a figure! such coloring! and such gracious manners! It was the kind of figure to wear a jersey; do I make my meaning clear ? and yet in every line and movement slenderness, suppleness, grace, youth, innocence itself. That combination of physical roundness with the other distinctive charms of early youth is rarer among American and English than Con- tinental women, and it is so rare everywhere that when a type of perfection is found, is it not fair to make a note of it ? She was not, it proved, a mere product of village op- portunities, a rustic prodigy who had outstripped her homely sisters. Rome and Turin had given her her WOULD YOU SUMMER AT BOSCO CHIESANUOVA ? 347 education, and court life would be her sphere of activity, if indeed she had not already begun it. Her family were there because it was their ancestral home and hunting-ground. Not that any castle or manor house of theirs remained; all had been swept away in the wars, nobody knows when, and the delicious pine groves and Alpine pastures were as innocent of anything of that kind as if it had been the Rocky Mountains. They were building a fine new one, with plenty of armorial shields upon it. They had been reduced to poverty during the Austrian domination. One of them, to gain his bread, had even held office under the hated oppressor, at Venice. But his son, the father of this blooming young Hebe, would have no share in such a mean-spirited subserviency. In the wisdom of his youth and ardent patriotism, he ran away from home, and took service in the revolutionary movements under the King of Sardinia. His uncalculating devotion was well rewarded, for, finally besides military pro- motion, he won the hand of a rich and handsome widow. Would you know how she became a rich woman ? It was an almost miraculous accident; there are lucky people in the world after all. It has an American touch, too. Her husband had manufactured cotton, and just before the outbreak of our Civil War, one of his clerks, by an error in an English letter, ordered him 10,000 bales of cotton, instead of i,ooo. There was an enormous rise in price at once, and a fortune was made. The Count — I would like to mention his name, but I don't see how I can after describing his daughter, almost indefensibly, I fear, — went into literature and 348 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROIE wrote plays, which abound in sprightliness and humor. Some of them still hold the boards. But he went also into politics, and became a deputy, of the conservative party. His literary style is so good that it is said he is chosen in parliament to prepare the addresses to the throne which it is desired to have particularly smooth. He represents his native moun- tain district, loads his constituents with favors, and has come back to make his summer home among them. His brother-in-law had also come, another titled rich man and member of parliament, and was building too. These were the nucleus that was drawing some atten- tion to a hitherto obscure little village and may in time result in making this refuge from the blazing heats of Lombardy well-known. Possibly the most charming glimpse of the divinity of the place was that we had on the morning of our final departure. Our cool, delightful drive down the pass, among the chestnut groves, had begun. We met her walking on the road, a comvie il faut carriage following close behind her. She wore a warm-colored gown which flamed in union with her rich flush of color. A beauty, yes, a veritable goddess-like person, without the slight- est doubt about it. She bowed very gently and sweetly, like the young chatelaine of the district who extended her graciousness even to strangers. That flower-like vision alone, in the greenery of the mountains, was enough to glorify them in memory. At Verona, later, she played in theatricals, with a spirit and talent equal to her beauty, in a piece of her father's composing, in which he also took part. Do you not like to hear about natural, unoperatic Italians for once? for they so rarely get into books. WOULD YOU SUMMER AT BOSCO CHIESANUOVA ? 349 For what is best in Italian feminine character, Queen Margherita of Savoy is a potent influence, and probably counted for something in the girl described above. It was possibly a reflection of her gracious royal smile we saw among the green hills of- the Venetian Alps. It is not necessary to have passed the splendid, mammoth cuirassiers who guard the door of the Quirinal at Rome and penetrated to the court ceremonies to undergo this influence. No lesson is so efficient as that set forth by a distinguished pattern, and fashion, regal prestige, patriotism, and hearty personal esteem and liking all combine to make Italian women imitate their queen. She is a woman who can talk to scientists, men of let- ters, musicians, painters, and all sorts of foreigners, in their own language; she sympathizes with all worthy objects in her kingdom; and she bears herself with an amiable dignity as free from affectation as weakness. If one were going to be a sovereign it would seem as if this were exactly the ideal way to act. Yet I still hear the clamor of a discussion that once broke out between our " Giacinta" and " Melania. " "She is not beautiful, not even good looking," main- tained the former. "When you come to beauty it isn't there; you have got to go somewhere else and look for it." "I say she is," cried Melania; "she is an angel be- yond compare." "No," persisted Giacinta, waving a negative fore- finger in the air, with a derisive smile. " Then I say you are not a good and proper Italian," cried Melania, in a rage. We sometimes suspected Giacinta of talking only to enrage this companion, but then, too, we thought she 350 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE had heard some socialistic opinions from working-- men, . members of her family, and really harbored the view — I give it as a sign of the times — that kings and queens are a useless lot whose days are nearly numbered. CHAPTER XXIX SOME ITALIAN HOUSEKEEPERS, AND CONCLUSION AT NICE The other young girls, the gay dancing ones, at the hotel, complained that, on returning to Verona, their jolly times would all be over, and a dull, serious life was before them. The sort of thing they had done was winked at in the country, but, once back in town, a mild walking up and down in couples at the military music, in the Piazza, constituted about their only gayety. In the city of Juliet and of merry Capulet — who used to cry "What ho, more lights! bid the musicians play!" — though it is a city of 70,000 people, with a large, brilliantly uniformed garrison, nobody entertains. The natural result is a good deal of conventional dulness and want of vivacity among the women. Nearly the same description applies to all but the very largest Italian cities. The women are more easily adaptable to new condi- tions than those of Spain, but they have a large degree of the same sort of rigidity to overcome. The Italian woman is domestic, humdrum, contented with a little — perhaps contented with almost too little. I have al- ready shown that I do not include everybody, I speak of the mass, the great rank and file. Of course, a dash- ing, ultra-fashionable few have acquired the fast cos- mopolitan tone, and no man can ever be quite as cos- mopolitan as that sort of a woman. There are Italian 351 I 352 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE women who adopt Anglomaniac vagaries, who sail in their own yachts, or their friends', who smoke, flirt out- rageously, play deeply at Monte Carlo, and pass their lives going on from one to another of the regular European pleasure resorts. A few such individuals really represent no nationality at all; take away the difference in language and you could not tell the Italian from the Frenchman, Russian, Englishman or American. You generally expect Italian women to be brunettes, but what a variety of types you really see! even what a lot of red heads you run across.^ I don't think I ever saw a more pronounced pair than the brother and sis- ter, or young clerk and his sweetheart, who climbed with me one hot summer day to the top of Milan cathe- dral. The sister, or sweetheart, wore a mantilla, Span- ish fashion, over her red hair, which gleamed in a charming, burnished way through its black meshes. Shakespeare understood this and was true to the local types, even in his day. You will find in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," that he makes Julia say of Sylvia, of Milan: " Her hair is auburn; mine is perfect yellow." Your modern playwright, nine chances out of ten, makes all his Italian heroines as dark as night. The lace mantilla, so especially pretty on blonde and auburn heads, is, as in Spanish countries, fast being relegated to the poorer and working classes. Italian housekeeping is apt to be simple; a Spartan frugality is often found where something like luxury would have been expected. It argues something lenient and large-minded in the character of the men who put up with it, or perhaps it is a general native temperance and economy. Owing to this cause and lack of the ITALIAN HOUSEKEEPERS CONCLUSION AT NICE 353 habit of entertaining at home, the women have a great deal of time on their hands, which they are fond of em- ploying in dress. They dress very well. Nothing of the classic feeling of the Romans, their ancestors, has descended upon them in this respect: they aim to conform, at the cafe or on the promenade, as closely as possible to the latest fashion plates. The scenes at the cafes are very bright and pretty. It would be hard to see anything brighter, for instance, than the groups of pretty women and their acquaint- ance taking ices, under the electric lights, at the Cafe Nazionale, on the Corso at Rome, or Florian's, in the Piazza San Marco, at Venice, or even in the Piazza Vit- torio Emmanuele at Verona. But don't be deceived; there is a good deal of hollowness about it; it's some- thing of a mockery. Always the same monotonous chit- chat, the same post and position kept all the evening, and in the groups always the same few persons, mainly members of the family. I doubt not m.any a heavy sigh is heaved by feminine bosoms, longing for something more engrossing, some influx of the fresh and stimulat- ing outside world. When mellow autumn came on, which was just as lovely as in America, we walked our garden paths with unmixed pleasure, and promised ourselves ample atone- ment for the past. In the property of the Frances- chine, every little fruit-tree seemed of pure gold, the thin vines on the trellises were all of gold, and it is as- tonishing what subjects for a painter they were, those nuns, in their white caps and grayish blue gowns, ram- bling about amid the yellow tracery. At that season, too, we did our chief excursioning. Another reason why the first year could not have been very cheap is that 23 354 ^ HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE we were forever going off on expeditions. To Venice, of course ; then to Mantua, the city of " the lean apothe- cary;" Palladio's Vicenza, where also, I should think, one might live charmingly, on the lines here indicated; the brilliant old battlefields of Rivoli and Arcole, and the sad modern one of Custoza ; and Lake Garda, with its taste of an Austrian town, over the border, at Riva. It is no very long railway ride southward to Parma or northward to Innspruck and into Germany, all of which should be counted to the advantage of Verona. Our fires were lighted in October, and were burning plenty of wood by the end of the month. Mists now constantly began to rise from the plain and veil the dis- tance ; an occasional London fog even hid the garden, and we could not see five feet from our windows. On Thanksgiving Day there was a light fall of snow, and the next day an old-fashioned snowstorm. If in the evening we ventured down to the theatre or the cafes, on our return homeward, the wind was bitterly piercing. The Bersaglieri at the tower by our gate regularly chal- lenged us. " Who goes there ? " the sentry v/ould cry. " A/m'd/" — Friends! we would reply, in the style of the penny-dreadful novel. It was not reasonable in them to think we could cap- ture their town, with its garrison of six thousand men, so they must have done this chiefly to relieve the mo- notony of guard mounting. Once, when alone, I replied to the hail simply " Amico " — Friend, but that would not do at all. ^''Amici!'' was the password and*M;;wVr' they would have, and I found that it did not do to imperil personal safety for the sake of grammatical correctness. ITALIAN HOUSEKEEPERS CONCLUSION AT NICE 355 The middle of December a hard winter set in, — a winter of the Russian or Canadian sort, such, we were told, as had not happened before for forty years. Our water-pipes froze up, and remained frozen. The snow put caps and mantles like ermine on the old statuary; it lay deep on the steps of the Roman arena, on the roofs and barges along the river, and in continuous ridges by the horse-car tracks, the whole giving the town a crude, shrunken appearance. The Palazzina Giusti, which had first been untenable on account of the heat, now became untenable on account of the cold. When we left it, that terrace which had once been al- most an inferno was hidden under Siberian heaps of snow, broken only by the paths shovelled for the re- moval of our furniture. The fact is that the longing for Nice had much to do with this impatience of hardships, which otherwise should have had nothing very formidable about them for Americans. We returned to Nice proper. As all the earlier journeys had pointed toward that goal so all the later ones seemed to point back to it. It was just the eve of Christmas when we reached it, and a day of warm sun- shine and unclouded blue in sky and sea. The con- tentment and comfort it was, after all the recent inclemencies, to go about without a greatcoat, and dry-shod, and to breathe again the fragrance of the oranges and roses filling the gardens, I shall never forget. Indeed, I count that pleasurable violent con- trast, that miracle, as one of the most memorable things in my lifetime. Whenever I think of it, it is with a grati- tude that overcomes the memory of a host of incon- veniences. I shall not go into detail here about Nice proper. 356 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE We have lived in various ways — first, in pretty apart- ments with charming views of the sea which we endeav- ored to make take the place of a garden, and finally in a rather stately old house which, with some increase in expense, combines something of the city and country both. In our time, we have thrice seen rents generally advanced, while recent tariff legislation, and notably the economic duel with Italy, have raised the cost of provisions, so that some of the figures I have given for the Riviera are already passing into history. The chief defect in our experiment has already been hinted at. Your cheap habitation, no matter how ex- cellent, artistic, and original in itself, must always throw you into pretty close relations with persons quite able to pay the same low rents, who will have very different ways of living, and these will be very likely to bring your own to naught. The trial is well worth making, all the same, but nobody can expect to fly in the face of political economy, and wholly escape, sometimes, the consciousness that " every prospect pleases, and only man is vile." Nice has become considerably nearer the outer world than it was a little time since. A good line of steamers has been put on, to Genoa, and now to run over from New York to the Riviera direct is quite a simple matter. We hardly know whether this should be taken as an added inducement to go, or only to remain with the yet greater comfort of mind, since it has become so easy to go if one like to. THE END. INDEX Adam, Madame Juliette, 38, 42-43 Affreville, 117 Ajaccio, 279, 281, 28?, 284, 289-91 Alassio, 215 Albano, 305 Lake, 306 Alban Mts., the, 305 Alecsandri, 100 Algeria, 109-19 climate of, 11 7-1 8 voyage to, 109; from, 120 Algiers, the city of, 109-16, 118 Alhambra, the, 125-26 Aljessur, the Count, 273 Alpine chasseurs, the French, 263- 64 American chromos in Algiers, T17 farmer near Blidah, an, 117 fleet at Villefranche-sur-Mer, 227 insurance companies in Ma- drid, 150, 153 American's library, an, at Rome, 309 American travellers in France, so- cial reception of, 32-34 Ampotiza, 133 Andalusia, 120, 139, 142 Angouleme, 206 Antibes, 238 Arabic, or Moorish, strain in Spanish women, 139 or Moorish, strain in habita- tions at Aries, 91 or Moorish, strain \n patois of the Riviera, 233 or Moorish, strain in Brazil- ian name, 273 Arcachon, 206 Arc de Triomphe, at Paris, 152; quarter of the, 15 Arch of Charles III. at Madrid, 152 Architectural felicities at Salaman- ca, 176, 178-79, 191 Architecture at Madrid, the Dutch influence in, 152 at Madrid, modern, 149-53, 313 modern at Rome, 313 of Chirruguera, 177 Arene, Paul, 100 Argamasilla, 149 Ariccia, 305, 306 Aries, 91 the Lion of, 102 Armorial escutcheons, happy ef- fect of in Spanish buildings, 1 78- 79 Atlas Mts., the, 117 Aubanel, 96 358 INDEX Avignon, 85-104 the Bridge of, 93, 95 houses and prices at, 87-91 the Felibres, or Troubadours at, 93-105 Avila, 147 Avranches, 4, 206 " Bachelor of Salamanca," the, Le Sage's, 184 of Salamanca, the degree of, 184 " Balmoral, the Countess of," 263 Bandits, still remaining in Corsica, 288 Bankruptcy law, rigors of the, 281 Baroncelli Javon, Folco de, loi, 105 Bastia, 281-84 Baths of Ledesma, 180 of Lucca, 287 of Marmolejo, 164 Bayonne, 206 Bazan, Emilia Pardo, 146, 156 Beaulieu, near Nice, 218, 269 Bedford Park, London, 300 Beds, disguised in closets, 4, 21 Bellacoscia, the bandits, 288 Beni Mered, 117 Bennet, Dr., on Algerian climate, 118 "Bentzon's, Th.," literary opinion of Frenchmen, 35-36 Berthemont, 332 Biarritz, 204 Blanc, Madame (" Th. Bentzon "), 35, 36 Blavet, Alcide, 98 Blidah, houses and prices at, 116 an American farmer near, 117 Blois, the Chateau of, 207 houses and prices at, 207-08 Bocognano, 288 Bonaparte Wyse, 100 Bonaparte family, the, at Rueil, 62; at Ajaccio, 289-91 Bordeaux, 206 Borgo, Corsica, 284 Bosco Chiesanuova, 344-48 Boswell, James, his journey in Corsica, 283-84 Bou Farik, 117 Boulanger, General, 45, 122 Bourg-la-Reine, houses and prices at, 59, 63 Bourget, Paul, 35 Bouzarea, 1 13-14 Brazil, the deposed Emperor of, 271-78 Brittany, peculiarities of, 3, 8-9 Brownings' palace at Venice, the, 321 Buildings, a legacy to Paris from international expositions, 56 Building-sites on the Riviera, 218, 237 Bull-fighting at Madrid, 169, 171- 73 the humane Portuguese meth- od of, 169 Cabbe Roquebrune, 251-58 Roquebrune, the legendary landslide at, 251 Roquebrune, the Passion-Play at, 251-58 INDEX 359 Cable tramway at Lyons, 84 Calderon estate, at Granada, the, 126-27 "Calendau," Mistral's, 103 Calvi, 284 Campagna of Rome, the, 304-05, 309 Campidoglioat Rome, the, 314 Campillo de Arenas, 134 Cancale, 6 Cannes, 107, 244, 272, 278 Canterbury, houses and prices at, 293-94 Capri, 318 Captain, or Capoulie, of the Feli- bres, 99 Cardo, Corsica, 282 " Carmen Sylva," 100 Caroube, or sweet locust, the, 232 Casbah, the, 11 1 Casone at Ajaccio, the, 289 Castagniccia or Chestnut Country, the, 286, 289 Castel Gandolfo, a house and gar- den at, 306 Catania, 316 Ceremonial, formal, remaining un- der the French Republic, 31 Champ de Mars, 44-46 Champfleury, Jules, 69-71 Changing of domicile from France to Italy, 333-35 Chardin, the Chevalier, 216 Chateau Neuf, 238 Chateau of Blois, 207 Chateaux, of Henri IV., at Pau, 205; Francis I., at St. Germain, 63; La Conninais and La Ga- raye, 8; in Paris, 18, 36 Cheapness, the last word of, 339- 40 Cherbourg, 3-4 Chestnut flour, 286 Chirruguera, 177 Choubersky stove, the, 28-29 Cigale, la, the society of. lOI Cimiez, 319 Civita Vecchia, 304 Collecting, the passion for an- alyzed, 69-71 College de France, lectures at the, 30 " Colomba," Merimee's, 282, 288- 89 Colonies, stranger, on the Conti- nent, 5, 32, 205, 303, 316, 318, 321 stranger, literary and artistic origin of thj, 7-8 Commandant, a French, and his family, 230, 235, 292 Complaints, or r e'c lam at ion s, against large corporations, in France, 212 Concarneau, 4 Concierge system, the, 17, 87, 153, 311 " Contes Proven^aux,'' Rouma- nille's, 96 Convent of the Sacred Heart, Paris, 36 of the Franceschini, Verona, 336, 353 education for French women, 36 Coppee, Francois, 100 Cordova, 138-40 360 INDEX Corsica, visible from Nice, 279; voyage to, 280-81; building in, 281-82 ; Boswell in, 283-84; ves- tiges of Paoli in, 283-86; the chestnut country of, 285, 286; the people of, 287; bandits in, 282, 288; vestiges of the Bona- partes in, 289, 290-91 ; climate of, 290; retired pensioners in, 283; authoritative character of inhab- itants, 282-83 Corte, 284, 286-87 Cortes of Spain, aspect of , 169-71 Cours Grandval, the, 289 Coutances, 206 Da Fonseca, President, 275-76 Darro, the, 100, 127, 154 Daudet, Alphonse, 31, 101-02, 157 De Alencar, Joze, 274 De Amicis, 150 Debts, a new Spanish plan for collecting, 160 Deschanel, Professor, 30 D'Eu, the Countess, 272 Diligencia, or stage-coach, a Spanish, 129-30 Dinan, mediaeval remains at, 6-7; English colony at, 7-8; houses and prices at, 9-10 Dinard, 5 Domicile, changing a, from France to Italy, formalities of, 333-35 Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, 271-78 " Don Orsino," Crawford's, 307 " Dona Perfecta," Galdos', 160 Driver, a Spanish stage-coach, 132 Drivers, travellers', 312 Durance, the, loi Ecclesiastical treasures in Spain, 194 Ecouen, houses and prices at, 58 Eiffel Tower, the, 51-53 Eighteenth Century, revival of in- terest in, 44, 55 El Affroun, 117 Elba, 280-83 Elevators, or lifts, scarcity of in foreign houses, 15 Elysee, the Palace of the, 31 Emperor of Brazil, the, 272-78 Empress Theresa, the, 272 English colonies on the Continent, 5, 32, 205, 303, 316, 318, 321 Escorial, palace of the, 152, 174 village of, a house in the, 174-75 Espeluy, 129, 136 Esperabe, Don Mames, 184 Esquiline at Rome, the, 312 Eugenie, the Empress, 286, 289 Exposition, Paris, of 1889, the, 44-57 ; political aspects of, 45) 55-56 ; noble simplicity of unfurnished buildings of, 48- 49, 50, 56-57 ; sketchy charm of in uncompleted state, 47, 49-51 ; workmen at, 47, 52 ; ingenious system of tempo- rary sculpture, 53 ; the private initiative at, 56 ; site of on mil- itary ground, 46 Expositions, International, plans of compared, 49 Eza, 238 INDEX 361 " Fa'Ience Violin," the, Champ- fleury's, 68-82 Farandole, the, 94 Farmer of the Riviera, a peasant, and his family, 220, 231-33, 332 Felibres, the, 86, 83, 98, 105 Felibrige, the movement of the, 86, 99, loi Femme de manage, or day-servant system, the, 12, 23-25, 26, 233 Ferry, Jules, 55 Fesch, Cardinal, 289 Feyen-Perrin, 6 Fiesole, 319 Florence, influence of the Italian Court at, 317 ; English influence at, 318; houses and prices at, 318-19 Flowers and flower-culture in the Riviera, 229, 232, 332 Fontenay-aux-roses, 59 Fournisseurs, or purveyors of daily provisions, 25, 234-35 Fragonard, his pictures at Grasse, 264 the Boulevard du, 264 Franceschini, convent of the,, at Vdrona, 336, 353 Franceschini, Pietri, 286 Frascati, 305 Frenchmen, opinions concern- ing, 35 " Friends of the Trees, the," 236 Furnishing, an "Impressionist" theory of, 22 Furniture, picking up antique, 9, 22-23 transportation of, by land and sea, 210-13, 229, 334 Galdos, Perez, 157 Gambling at Monte Carlo, sophis- tical defence of, a, 249 at the Passion-play of Cabbe Roquebrune, 253 Garden, the Giusti, 331, 340-43 Gardens, drawbacks of the modest sort, 59, 217 "General," the English servant thus called, 298 Getarfe, 149 Gif, the Abbey of, a garden fete at, 42-43 Gil Gon9alez de Avila, 179, 173 Giusti, the palace and garden, 330- 31, 336, 340, 341 Palazzina, the, 330, 335-43, 349. 353-55 Golo, the, 284-85 Goncourts', the, study of Frago- nard, 264 Granada^ houses and prices at, 127-28; hotels, 121; color, 122; the novios, or lovers, 122; the public garden, 124; late hours, 122; newspapers, 122; a relig- ious procession, 123; tombs of Spanish sovereigns, 123-24; the gypsies and their rock-cut dwell- ings, 124-25; the Alhambra, 125; a senator from, 155 Grand Canal at Venice, the, grow- ing commercial character of , 326 Grasse, the town, 259-68; the Queen's visit, 259-71; manufac- tories of perfumery and fruit drying at, 268-69; the Baroness de Rothschild, 269-71 ; the Counts of Grasse, 271 362 INDEX Gras, Felix, 98 " Greville, Henri " (Madame Du- rand), 40 " Guacho," De Alencar's, 274 Guadalquivir, the, 140 " Guarany," De Alencar's, 274 Gypsies of Granada, the, 124-25 Half-stories in Venetian pal- aces, 325 Hampstead Heath, 301 Hannibal at Salamanca, 190-91 Heating, systems in winter use, 28-29, 237, 310, 324, 327, 334 Hennessy, the painter, 64 House, a small, at Venice, 326-27 House of Napoleon at Ajaccio, 290 of the Gaffori at Corte, 290 of Paoli at Morosaglia, 286 House-agents, 88, 198, 293, 295, 296, 299 House-furnishing, a simplified theory of, 22 Housekeeping, difficulties in, due to the ipea.sa.nts' _pa^ois, 13, 338 Houses in Corsican villages, ex- traordinary heights of, 281 English, nomenclature of mi- nor, 298, 300 notable, at Salamanca: house of Cervantes, 180 ; of St. Theresa, 180 ; of Dona Ma- ria la Brava, 181 ; of the Shells, 179 Houses and prices at Cherbourg, St. Malo, Trouville, Dinan, Ver- sailles, Paris, Ecouen, Bourg-la- Reine, Sceaux, St. Mande, St. Maur, Nanterre, Rueil, St. Ger- main, Nevers, Avignon, Les Baux, Aries, Villefranche-sur- Mer, Algiers, St. Eugene, Bli- dah, Granada, Seville, Madrid, Escorial, Salamanca, St. Jean de Luz, Biarritz, Pau, Tours, Orleans, Blois, the Superga, in Corsica, at Canterbury, Oxford, Windsor, London (see under re- spective heads) Hugues, Clovis, 100 Ice, economic results of dispens- ing with, 27 Invalides, the quarter of the, 17-18 Irish College of Philip II., at Sala- manca, the, 187 Irving, Washington, 126 Isaacs, Jorge, 168 Italian Court, the effect of on Rome, 307 ; on Florence, 317 summer resort, an, 343-48 women, 346-53 women, blonde types of, 352 housekeeping, temperance and frugality of, 352 Italy, the Riviera the true, 319 winter climate of southern, 316 rejuvenated, 304 JABALCUZ, the Springs of, 135 Jaen, a stage-coach ride to, 129-35 the old town of, 135-36 Jeannel, Dr., 236 Joinville-le-Pont, 60 Kabyle dm^ellings, 114 INDEX 363 La Conninais, the Chateau of, 8 La Farlede, 107 La Garaye, the Chateau of, 107 La Mancha, 149 La Nation, attack on Monte Carlo by, 239, 243 "Lady of the Aristook," the, Howells', 156 Lagartijo, 169, 171-72 Laimber, Juliette, the Rue, 42 " Land of Thirst," the, iii Language, practical difficulties in, with the lower class, 13, 233, 338 Langue d'Oc, the, 99-100 Latin Quarter, the, 16, 293 Latin races, proposed alliance of the, 99 Les Baux, house at, 91 L'lle Rousse, 281 Literary club at Granada, a, 154 society at Madrid, 154-71 society at Paris, some, 40-43 Living abroad, for and against, 1-3, 28 Local intelligence, lack of, in local papers, 122 Lodging of sovereigns on their travels, 260, 272 London, houses and prices at, 300-01 fatiguing character of, 301. George Gissing's opinion as to residence in, 301 suburbs, 299, 300-01 Long Walks, at Windsor, 300; at Versailles, 11 ; at Villefranche, 222, 229, 300 Loti, Pierre, 43, 100 Lucca, 302-03 the Baths of, houses and prices at, 303-04 Luis de Leon, Fray, 192-93, 195 Luxembourg, quarter of the, in Paris, 17 Lyons, 84, 153, 313 Madrid, modern appearance of, 149-51, 153 ; palaces at, 151- 52 ; houses and prices at, 152- 53, 156, 162, 167 ; literary men of, 154-71 ; the Cortes at, 169 ; bull-fighting at, 169-73 Maillane, 102 Malaga, 120 Malmaison, 63 " Maria," Jorge Isaacs', 168 Maria la Brava, Dofia, 181-83 Marieton, Paul, 98-99 Market, on the Paris boulevards, 25 ; police regulation of, 25 Marketing, in Versailles, 12-14 ; Paris, 25-27 ; Venice, 328 ; Verona, 338-39 Jilet, or net, a, 25 in small quantities, effect of, 27 Marne, banks of the, near Paris, 62 Marriage-book, a, 341 Marseilles, 85, 105, 109, 153, 313 Maupassant, Guy de, 35, 281 Mayor of a French commune, a kindly, 236 Mazzantini, 169-71 • Mediterranean, the, 109, 280 a villa by the, 221 Melnotte, Claude, 220 3^4 INDEX Mentone, io8, 244, 254 " Miau," Perez Galdos', 159-60 Michaelmas term, the, 4 Middle class, the French, 34 Midsummer's Day, 68 " Mireille," or " Mireio," Mis- tral's, 103, 222 Mistraly the violent wind of the, 85, 90-91 Mistral, Frederick, 86, 92, 99, loi- 04 Monaco, 108 Mont Alban, the fort of, 219 Mont Cenis tunnel, a baby in the, 214 Mont St. Michel, 4 Monte Carlo, the village, 238, 244-46 Carlo, the Casino of, 239-50, Innocuous attacks on, 239, 242-43; insidious methods of advertising, 238-42 ; moral atmosphere of, 244, 250 ; press " retained " by, 241-42 ; great profits of, 240-41 ; general popularity of, 238, 244 ; play at, 242, 246, 249 ; typical players at, 245, 247-49 Montelimar, the gorges of, 85 Montmartre, 16, no Moorish farm, a, 11 4-1 6 Moorish aspect and traits in Al- geria, 109-12, 117 aspect and traits in Algeria, French encroachment on, no quarter, the, in Algerian towns, 117 Moorish women in the omnibuses, 112 Morosaglia, 285-86 Mosquitoes, plague of, in the Ri- viera, 222-23 Mounet Sully, 100, loi Moving, a French : plans and prices of transportation, 210-15 Mustapha Inferieur, in Superieur, 112 Mutton, at Verona, 339 Nanterre, 62, 63. Names, foreign transformation of English, 188, 334 Napoleon, 84, 267, 285, 289-91 Napoleon's Grotto, 289 house, at Ajaccio, 289-91 Neighbors at the Villa des Aman- diers, 230, 235-36, 257, 333 Nemi, Lake of, 306 " Nerto," Mistral's, 103 Net for carrying market-produce, 25 Nevers, 66-83 the pottery of, 68, 72-73 "New Grub Street," Gissing's, 301 Nice, 107, 204, 234, 244, 319, 355-56 Nobility, French, deference of the, to the richer foreigners, 32-33 Nomenclature of minor English houses, 298, 300 " CEdipus the King," in the Roman theatre at Orange, lOI Old china, the taste for,#82 INDEX 365 Olive-culture, 228, 232 orchards, characteristics of, 220 Olive-oil mills, 228 Oran, 118 Orange, 84, 100 Oranges, Riviera, 232 effect of, in the landscape, 107, 206 Orange-blossom crop, the, 232 Orezza, Springs of, the, 287 Orleans, houses and prices at, 206 Oued Fodda, 118 Over-building mania, the, at Rome, 307, 312-13; at Florence, 317 Oxford, 293, 295-99 houses and prices at, 294-98 Oyster-fishing at Cancale, 6 Palaces, of the Elyse'e, 31; the Escorial, 174; the Counts Giusti, 331, 340 at the Exposition of '89, 51, 56-57; at Madrid, 151; Sala- manca, 179; Rome, 309-10; Seville, 152; Venice, 321- 25; Verona, 331, 340 Palermo, 316 Palazzina Giusti, the, site of, 330- 31 ; ancient cypresses of, 330-31 ; plan of, 335-37; servants of, 334-35, 349-50; marketing at, 339; rent of, 339-40; upper gar- den of, 341-42; disadvantages of, 336, 343, 354-55; excursions from, 353-54 Paris, scarcity of elevators, 1 5 ; the districts of the Arc de Triomphe, the Marais, Montmartre, the Latin Quarter, the Luxembourg, the Invalides, the Place St. Fran9ois Xavier, 15-22; renting usages, 20-21; plans of apart- ments, 21-22; renting furni- ture in, 22; furnishing an apartment in, 22-23; servants in, 23-25, 28 ; provisions in, 25; marketing, 25-27; heating, 29; winter weather in, 29; social life, 30-34, 38-42; a convent at, 36- 37; the Exposition of 1889, 44- 57, 213; moving from, 210-11 Paoli, 283-84, 285-86 Paris suburbs, the, 58-65 Farisienne, the typical, 145-46 Parma violets, 232 Passion-Play at Cabbe Roque- brune, the, 251-58 gambling during, 253 " Pata de Gazella," De Alencar's, 274 Patois, 13, 233, 338 Pau, the town of, 204; houses and prices at, 205 Pavilion Montespan, the, 64 Peasant superstitions in illness, 235 costumes, lack of picturesque, in the Riviera, 260 costumes in Corsica, 287 " Pepita Ximenez," Valera's, 169 Perfumery, manufactories of, at Grasse, 268-69 Perugia, 316-17 Piedecroce, 287 Piombino, 280 Pisa, 302-03 Pivot truss, the, 57 Place Diamant, the, 290-91 366 INDEX Place des Vosges, the, i6 Plans of houses or apartments in Paris, 2i; Villefranche, 225; Venice, 322, 326; Verona, 335 Plans of International Expositions compared, 49 Plaza Mayor, at Salamanca, the, 176 Point Pescade, 112 Poitiers, 206 Ponte Leccia, 286 Ponte Novo, 284 Pottery, passion for collecting, the, 69-82 of Nevers, the, 72, 73 Princess Marianne Bonaparte, the, 290 Principles of '89 and '93, discrimi- nated by Jules Ferry, 55 Provence, 84-85, 95, 102, 122 Provisions, character and cost of, at Paris, 26-27; Seville, 142; Villefranche, 234; Oxford, 298; Venice, 328; Verona, 339 Public instruction in Spain, mod- ern law of, 186 Puerta de Arenas, 135 Puerta del Sol, the, 150 Queen of England, at Grasse, the, 259-71 of Italy, the, 307, 349 of Roumania, the, 100 Queens of Love and Beauty, in Provence, 97-98 Quirinal at Rome, the, 305, 306- 07, 349 Rain, in the Riviera, 231 Rain, in Northern and Western France, 3, 10, 15, 29, 206 Ranee, the, 6 Railway methods and prices, in transporting furniture, 212, 334 " Realism " in Spanish fiction, 158 Reciprocity, American, with Bra- zil, Dom Pedro's opinion of, 274 Rents of houses and apartments, in various places (see in detail, under head of Houses and Prices) calculated by the day, in Spain and Italy, 141, 325 Rent-days in France, 4, 68 Renting usages at Paris, 20-21 Rhone, the, 93-94, 222 Riviera, the French, i, 106-09, 118, 215-80, 319, 332-34, 355-56 the Genoese, 215 architecture in the, 216, 224 agreeable climate of, in sum- mer, 228 characteristics of, in winter and spring, 107, 237, 332 mosquitoes in the, 222-23 patois of the, 233 restricted building sites in the, 218, 237 prejudice against the, 106 Roads, excellent in back country of Spain, 131 sunken, in Brittany, 8 Roccola, or fowler's snare, a, 230 Rock-cut dwellings at Granada, 124; Cabbe Roquebrune, 252 Rodriguez, Miguel, Professor, 196 " Roniancero ,'' the, 98 Rome, houses and prices at, 304- 1 5 ; house-hunting, in the Stran- gers' Quarter, 308; on the Pin- cian, 308; at Trajan's Forum, 310; at St. Peter's, 311; at the Co- losseum, 311; on the Esquiline, 312; at the Villa Ludovisi, 312; at the Prati di Castelli, 312; on the Via Nazionale, 314; before the Campidoglio, 314; in the suburban villages, 305; modern improvements and architecture at, 316, 313-14; healthfulness, the question of, 309 Rothschild, the Baroness Alice de, 269-71 Roumanille, 86, 93, 96-98 Mademoiselle Therese, 97-98, 104 Rueil, 62 Rue Obscur, at Villefranche, the, 218 Sabine Mts. , 305 Salamanca, 175-202 the University of, 187-202 ancient student custom of "painting the town red," 201-02 Saliceti, the Canon, 285 San Dalmazzo, 232 San Remo, 244 Sardines, fresh, 234 Scallop-shell, use of the, in Span- ish architecture, 179 Sceaux, 59-60 Scholarships, or becas, at the Uni- versity of Salamanca, 186, 188 INDEX 367 Scholarships, or becas, for women, University of Salamanca, 188- 89 Scholl, Aurelien, 145 Sculpture, ephemeral, at the Ex- position, ingenuity of, 53 Servant-question, the, at Ver- sailles, 12, 26 ; Paris, 23-25 ; Se- ville, 142 ; Villefranche, 233 ; Oxford, 298 ; Verona, 337-38 Servants by the day, the fejmne de menage system, 12, 26, 23-25, 233. 338 Seville, 140-45, 178 houses and prices at, 141-42 Sexes, the relations of, in social gayeties abroad, 39-40 Shaler, American consul at Algiers, 113 " Sister San Sulpicio," Valdes', 144, 163-66 Siena, 316 "Sketch of the State of Algiers," Shaler's, 113 Small towns, difficulty of finding habitations in, 9, 293 Social gayeties, French, 31-43 ; Spanish, 143-45, 156 ; Italian, 345-46, 351-53 Social intermingling of foreigners with the French, desirability of a closer, 33-34 Soldiers, contemporary French, business-like aspect of, 4, 46 Sorbonne, the, lectures at, 30 Spain, castles in, 120 Spanish climates, 120, 147, 149, 152 ecclesiastical treasures, 194 368 INDEX Spanish element in Algeria, 109 gypsies at Granada, 124-25 landscape, loneliness of, 133- 34 stage-coach luncheon, a, 134- 35 novelists, 157-71 novelists in political posts, 161, 167, 169, 196 popular songs, 136-37, 147- 48 senator, a, 155-57 stage-coach, a, 129-30 social life, 143-45, 156 universities, 189-90 women, 138-39, 142, 144-48, 156 Spanish- American literature, 168 St. Denis, 58 St. Eugene, houses and prices at, 112, 114 St. Franjois Xavier, the Place de, 18, 19, 65 St. Germain, houses and prices at, 62-64 St. Jean, the day of, 68 St. Jean, the village of, 216 St. Jean de Luz, houses and prices at, 203 St. Jeannet, 238 St. John de Sahagan, 183 St. Malo, 5, 6 St. Mande, 60 St. Martin Lantosque, 332 St. Michel, the day of, 4, 68 St. Michel, Mont, 4 St. Maur, 61 St. Paul du Var, 238 St. Raphael, 107 St. Remy, 91, 96 St. Theresa, 147, 180 Stage-coach, a Spanish, 128-29 Strangers' quarter, the, in Paris, 16 ; Rome, 308 Street names, the later French, 67 Students of Salamanca, numbers of, 199-200 Student customs at Salamanca, 197-202 class-rooms at Salamanca, 195 Suburbs of Paris, 58-63 of Spanish cities, 120 Suburban gardens, small, defects of, 59, 67-68 Suicides at Monte Carlo, 238-39, 243, 249 Sun-dial, making a, 224 Sunken roads in Brittany, 8 Sunshine, pursuit of southward, 19, 20, 66, 128, 224, 300, 311, 322 cut off by hilly sites in the Riviera, 237 Superga, a home on the, 214 "Swallow, the," Baroncelli- Javon's, 105 Tarascon, 91-92 Tariff-war, between France and Italy, effect of, on prices, 234, 307, 356 Terracing system in the Riviera 218 Tio Jindama, El, the bull-fight- ing newspaper, 173 Tivoli, 305 Tombs of Spanish sovereigns, beauty of, 125 INDEX 369 " Tony," Madame Blanc's, 35-36 Tours, 206 Transplanting trees to the Expo- sition, 45-47 ' ' Trees, the Friends of," 236 Troubadours at Avignon, the new, 86, 93, 98-105 Turin, 214 " Une FzV," de Maupassant's, 281 University of Salamanca, the, 187- 202; women at the, 189-90 Universities of Spain, other, 178 Valdepenas, the wine of, 135 Valdes, Armando Palacio, 144, 162-66 Valence, 84 Valera, Juan, 147, 166-71 Valley of the Consuls, 113 Venice, 319; cold in winter, 324; hot in summer, 339; recent ad- vance of real estate values, 321 ; commercial aspect of the Grand Canal, 321 ; houses and prices at, 321-29; heating, lighting, and water-supply at, 324, 326-27; landlords at, 325; separate street entrance for each apartment, 325 Verona, latter-day activity at, 330; battlements of, 331, 335; a pa- lazzina at, 330-31, 336-43, 353" 55; custom-house formalities at, 334; domestic service at, 337-38; marketing and cost of provisions at, 337; economics at, 339-40; climate of, 336, 343, 353-55 Versailles, the town, park and pal- ace, 10-12, 15, 62, 63 housekeeping at, 10, 12-14 Vicenza, 354 Vienne, 84 Villa architecture in the Riviera, 216, 224 ** Villa des Amandiers," the, 221- 37, 319, 332-33 manner of life at, 235-38 Villa Ludovisi, the, 312 Villeneuve-les-Avignon, 94-95 Vincennes, 60 Violet train, to Paris, the, 232 *' Violin, the Faience," 68-82 VioUet-le-duc, his monument to the Bonaparte sovereigns, at Ajac- cio, 291 Vizzavona, 287 Walled towns, the taste for, 5, 331 Wash, the family, comparative treatment of, 28 Water system of the Riviera, the, 226 Wild-flowers, in the Riviera, 229, 332 Windsor, houses and prices at, 300 Winter climates, Paris, 29; Pisa and Nice compared, 303; the Riviera, 237 Wine, French, skepticism as to, since the prevalence of phyl- loxera, 27, 234 Women, French, originality of, in dress, 32; the literary view of morality of, 35; con- vent education of, 36-37; 370 INDEX patriotism of, 38; alleged freedom of, after marriage, 38; habits in society, 39-40; literary and semi-literary, 40-43 Italian, as landlords, 325, 344; manners of, in the country, 345; . in the provincial towns, 350, 353; an ad- mirable type of young, 346- 48; influence of the Queen upon, 349; "cosmopolitan," 351; blonde types of, 352; as housekeepers, 352 Spanish, as exemplified by a beauty at Cordova, 138-39; tobacco-girls and dames of higher rank at Seville, 143; a type of domestic perfec- tion at Seville, 145; a cer- tain fixity of character in, 146; a monarchical-radical, 146; an adorable saint, 157-58 at the University of Sala- manca, 189-go Workmen at the Exposition, 47- 48, 52 Xenil, the, 124, 126 ZoRiLLA, the crowning of at the Alhambra, 100, 154 By WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP. MEXICO, CALIFORNIA, AND ARIZONA : Being a New and Revised Edition of "Old Mexico and Her Lost Provinces." With Numerous Illustrations. i2mo. Cloth, $2 GO. The primitive habits and surroundings of the people with whom he came in contact are ably depicted, and here and there we come across graphic bits of description of scenery, of costumes, and of customs. What is being done to develop the country, to open it up to civili- zation, to promote its industries, to extract its minerals, is all ably related. Moreover, he has taken pains to gather together and com- pile various statistics on these subjects which cannot fail to be of in- terest to those speculators who cast longing and worldly eyes in the direction of Mexico. The book is full of capital illustrations, and, taken altogether, can be highly praised. — M. Y. Herald. What with his admirable and characteristic sketches, his irrepressi- ble American persistency in going to all places and seeing all things in the face of alleged impossibilities, his close observation, Mr. Bishop has gone beyond any writer we know of in getting at "the actual heart of things." — Nation, N. Y. It is out of the beaten path of tourists, and for that reason full of fresh interest. But the author would make a readable book wherever he should journey, for he has eyes for all that is worth seeing, and a pen that is as graphic as the pencil. The work is elaborately illus- trated, and the reader may feel as if he made the journey himself. — N. V. yournal of Commerce. FISH AND MEN IN THE MAINE ISLANDS. 1 2 mo. Paper, 25 cents. The most entertaining study of the kind that we have read for a long time. — N. V. Mail and Express. The picturesque scenery and quaint and amusing customs of the natives of the islands are described in a lively and entertaining man- ner. — Observer, N. Y. Fishing-life aboard ship and ashore is portrayed graphically, the traits of the people and characteristic scenes being pictured with the pencil as well as the pen, and the reader will gain so easily from no other source within the range of our knowledge so satisfactory an idea of the subject. It is a capital book to slip into the pocket as one starts for his vacation. — Congregationalist, Boston. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 4S* Harper & Brothers will send the above works by mail, postage ^rePaid^ to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES IN AMERICA. A Book of Etiquette. By Mrs. John Sherwood. New and Enlarged Edition, Revised by the Author. i6mo, Extra Cloth, $i 25. Mrs. Sherwood's admirable little volume differs from ordinary works on the subject of etiquette, chiefly in the two facts that it is founded on its author's personal familiarity with the usages of really good society, and that it is inspired by good sense and a helpful spirit. There is nothing of pretence in it, nothing of that weak wor- ship of conventionality which gives the stamp of essential vulgarity to the greater part of what is written on this subject. . . . We think Mrs. Sherwood's little book the very best and most sensible one of its kind that we ever saw. — N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. We have no hesitation in declaring it to be the best work of the kind yet published. The author shows a just appreciation of what is good breeding and what is snobbishness. ... In happy discrimi- nations the excellence of Mrs. Sherwood's book is conspicuous. — Brooklyn Union. It is a sensible and pleasantly written volume, which has already won recognition as one of the best books of its kind, and this new edition is called for by the heartiness with which the public has en- dorsed the work. — Boston Courier. A sensible, comprehensive book, which has endured criticism suc- cessfully, and deserves now to be regarded the best book of its kind published in this country. ... A better guide than Mrs, Sherwood's book through the paths of social usages we do not know. The book is a handsome one, as it ought to be. — Christian Intelligencer^ N. Y. Relates to every imaginable phase of the subject, treats all points with refinement, good sense, and knowledge from the fashionable stand-point. It is designed not to treat the subject from the ethical or didactic point of view, but to describe simply the customs that prevail in the most representative circles of American fashion. Its value depends on the fact that that service, such as it is, has been rendered by no one else as well as by the author of this manual. — Independent, N. Y. There is, we should say, no doubt that this is the best American book on the topics indicated by the title, and we have no hesitation in heartily commending it as such. It is the special merit of the book that it does not confine itself to cut-and-dried rules of etiquette, but abounds in sensible suggestions and brief and intelligent discus- sion of social ethics. It is also an essentially readable book. — Chris- tian Union, N. Y. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. ^iW Harper & Brothers will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS J 020 677 783 7