Delphi Collected Works of Ouida, page 213
This was the manner in which Pascarèl would talk to me when the mood was on him, lying Under the vines in the noon heats, lazily touching a chord of his mandoline, or wandering down some hill-side when the moon was high amongst the trembling stalks of maize.
And the charm of the quaint, fantastic, half-spiritual, sportive, pathetic, whimsical discourse of his so grew upon me, little by little, that it acted like a spell. All my rebellion against my fate, my desires for riches, my feverish dreams of strange fortunes and of high estate, sank away into an absolute contentment Beside a dreamer who only thought a life like the Genius Gwyn Araun’s worth the envying, all mere ambition looked meretricious and empty; and beside a philosopher who broke his dry bread contentedly under a peasant’s house-vine, after a half day’s march along the mountains, one becomes ashamed to yearn after such pitiful things as pearls and rubies and fine raiment
CHAPTER VII.
Olivet.
PASCAREL believed in genius. It was his religion. For mediocrity his contempt was boundless.
Genius he had himself, and of the rarest sort. The countless trifles which he flung away with such lavishness amongst the populace were gems of the utmost perfection in their kind.
The brightest wit, the subtlest philosophy, the most gracious charms of poetry and symmetry characterised these ephemeral creations which he composed one after another, without effort, almost, one could have said, without thought, and which, when they had served their turn for a few nights, he remembered no longer, and which would have been thrown away and lost for ever had not little Toccò, who worshipped him, been wont tenderly to collect the scattered scraps and ends of paper on which Pascarèl wrote down these fancies in a careless stenography which served him and baffled all others.
My own dreams that I might have any touch of genius in me he dismissed with unutterable contempt, half gay, half tender.
“Genius!” he cried. “Cara mia, when you sang in the Market-place of Verona, you were a perfect picture, that I grant But a dog leapt on you with muddy paws, and you paused in your singing to brush the snow off your yellow skirts. If you had had any genius, singing as you sang, what would you have known though fifty dogs should have soiled your gown? You have no genius. Be thankful. What do women want with it when they have as fair a face as you? At your best you will never be more than a mandoline, which will answer in true chords to the touch of a fine player. You will never originate a cadence one whit more than the mandoline ever does.”
“And what shall I be at my worst?” I cried, not well pleased at his verdict.
“Oh, at your worst, of course, you will be the mandoline with every string broken, like everything else at its worst But what is more probable is, that you will fall into the hands of some musician who will just get out of you all the vile flourishes and ornate fioriture which go down as good music in this world, you all the while believing the bungler who runs his roulades on you to be a great maestro.
“It is women’s way. They always love colour better than form, rhetoric better than logic, priestcraft better than philosophy, and flourishes better than fugues. It has been said scores of times before I said it “Nay,” he pursued, thinking he had pained me, “you have a bright wit enough, and a beautiful voice, though you sing without knowing very well what you do sing. But genius you have not, look you; say your thanksgiving to the Madonna at the next shrine we come to; genius you have not.”
“What is it?”
“Well, it is hard to tell; but this is certain, that it puts peas unboiled into the shoes of every pilgrim who really gets up to its Olivet “Genius has all manner of dead dreams and sorrowful lost loves for its scallop-shells; and the palm that it carries is the bundle of rods wherewith fools have beaten it for calling them blind.
“Genius has eyes so clear that it sees straight down into the hearts of others through all their veils of sophistry and simulation; and its own heart is pierced often to the quick for shame of what it reads there.
“It has such long and faithful remembrance of other worlds and other lives which most mortals have forgotten, that beside the beauty of those memories all things of earth seem poor and valueless.
“Men call this imagination or idealism; the name does not matter much; whether it be desire or remembrance it comes to the same issue; so that genius, going ever beyond the thing it sees in infinite longing for some higher greatness which it has either lost or otherwise cannot reach, finds the art, and the humanity, and the creations, and the affections which seem to others so exquisite most imperfect and scarcely to be endured.
“The heaven of Phædrus is the world which haunts Genius — where there shall not be women but Woman, not friends but Friendship, not poems but Poetry; everything in its uttermost wholeness and perfection; so that there shall be no possibility of regret nor any place for desire.
“For in this present world there is only one thing which can content it, and that thing is music; because music has nothing to do with earth, but sighs always for the lands beyond the sun.
“And yet all this while genius, though sick at heart, and alone, and finding little in man or in woman, in human art or in human nature, that can equal what it remembers — or, as men choose to say, it imagines — is half a child too, always: for something of the eternal light which streams from the throne of God is always shed about it, though sadly dimmed and broken by the clouds and vapours that men call their atmosphere.
“Half a child always, taking a delight in the frolic of the kids, the dancing of the daffodils, the playtime of the children, the romp of the winds with the waters, the loves of the birds in the blossoms. Half a child always, but always with tears lying close to its laughter, and always with desires that are death in its dreams.
“No; you have not genius, cara mia. Say your grazie at the next shrine we pass.”
I heard him with humiliation and a sense of my own littleness.
Though he had never cared to make gold or fame with it, there was in everything that this man did or said the indefinable charm of that originality and that poetry which are called for want of a better definition by the name of genius.
And I had dared to think my poor little trick of song, which I shared with the blackbird on the cherry bough, had been genius likewise!
I felt ashamed of my presumption. I had only talent — a facile and delicate talent enough, but nothing that was higher. My song was pure and flexile, and could reach with wonderful ease high and far, as the stroke of a bell sounded on high over a sunny, still country.
But it was no more than the bird’s gift as it sings under the pink cherry-blossom.
CHAPTER VIII.
École Buissonnière.
IT won me much love, however, amongst the people.
Amongst the people and the little troop of Pascarèl I was most often spoken of by my old Veronese name of L’Uccello.
Although he would never let me act, he now and then permitted me to sing to his audiences.
Whenever he did give his consent, which was but rarely, I used to run on to the little stage with rapture, and look down on the multitude of swarthy, eager, admiring faces with a delight that was half childishness and half vanity.
They were good teachers, too, in this careless école buissonnière, those little knots of the Italian populace, unerring in their censure of any imperfection, enthusiastic in their welcome of any excellence.
They gave me stimulus and strength; it stung me to be hissed for a false half-note by some black-browed pewterer or some open-eyed taverner’s boy. In much these people were my masters, by accuracy of ear and facility of execution; and the roughness of their inexorable criticism, joined with the sincerity of their hard-won homage, completed for me the musical education which Ambrogiô had so well commenced.
Now and then it so happened that I pleased them so well, that when the little curtain dropped they would break in gay riot on to the stage, and bear me off in the midst of them, covering me with flowers, and shouting vivas through the quiet of the scattered village and the moonlit fields.
Poor old Uccello! I thought of him often as his country people hailed me by his name.
Of all the poetic figures of the Cinque Cento there is surely none more pathetic than his; going so timidly about in the midst of the great, gorgeous, busy, passionate Florentine life, absorbed in the one vast conception, with which scarce any man ever credits him; painting on the walls of his humble home the likenesses of the animals which he loved so well and was too poor to keep; living with his birds that fluttered for ever round his patient head, as he sat and worked out the immeasurable gifts which the world takes at his hands without once thinking of the giver.
“Ah, mia cara! Si voi sapevete quanto la Prospettiva m’è dolce!”
How one hears the gentle words sighed out in the long nights, of whose cold and sleeplessness the old man felt nothing, as he dreamed over his one priceless discovery.
And in his life Florence knew him not; Florence laughed at him; Florence only saw in him a meek, quaint, fanciful, timid soul, good for very little in the victorious city.
There were only his birds that knew, his birds that talked with him and solaced him, we may be sure, even as their brethren did St. Francis.
The good and sad old Uccello! — I used to think of him often, very often, when the people shouted his name about me after I had pleased them with my voice, as we went homeward from the theatre in the summer nights with the olive shadows all alive with fireflies, and the stretching plains of millet white as the waves of a starlit sea.
The adoration of me under my old Veronese name that the villagers gave me far and wide, inspired me with many strong desires to show myself upon his stage in the towns and in the cities to a hushed many-coloured crowd as I had done in the Cathedral Square at Verona.
But to this wish Pascarèl showed himself inexorable.
It was all very well to sing in some little homely paese amongst the hills, or amidst the fields in Tuscany, or the Adrian Romagna, in my amber and purple skirts, when there was no one there to hear but the contadini off the farms, or the straw-plaiters, and stone-cutters of the village. These were my nights of triumph.
But all the same, I aspired to some wider sphere. I wanted to be heard in the cities. I wanted to take my share in amusing the larger crowds, when we paused in the alpine shadows of Milano, or amidst the Romanesque wonders of Ravenna, or beneath the aerial and gorgeous pinnacles of S. Marco.
But of this Pascarèl would not hear.
“No, donzella, it is not for you,” he would answer; and I found it of no avail to urge my cause; for Pascarèl was too Italian not to have a woollen thread of obstinacy running here and there through the soft bright-coloured velvets of his temperament “Why is it not for me?” I said, one day, as we came down from San Marcello and went on our way towards the little town of Pistoia.
We were that day at Gavinana, I remember; having gone up under the chestnut trees, over the rocky road, in the bright coolness of early morning.
The heavy June rains had swelled the mountain streams that were tumbling and foaming with delicious sound far below in the Rio Gonfio. The broad green lawn of the Vecchetto under its deep chestnut shade was lonely and wet and fragrant, as though it had never been steeped red in the blood of the last Republic, and in the grove of the Doccio the thrushes were singing where once there had shivered the lances of Florence.
We had been talking of those times when the tower chimes of the little castello had all rung loudly a stormo, and where the shady grass-grown marketplace, that now only echoed with the tinkle of a mule’s bell and the splash of its quiet fountain, had heard the savage shouts of Spain, as great Ferruccio fell pierced with a thousand wounds from pike and arquebuse, and thinking to the last of Florence.
We had been talking of all these times as we sat at our simple meal of bread and wine and melons, under the ancient chestnuts, and Pascarèl had been sighing, as was his wont, that his lot had not been in those vivid and virile days.
“There was so much more colour in those days,” he had said, rolling a big green papone before him with his foot. “If, indeed, it were laid on sometimes too roughly. And then there was so much more play for character. Nowadays, if a man dare go out of the common ways to seek a manner of life suited to him and unlike others, he is voted a vagabond, or, at least, a lunatic, supposing he is rich enough to get the sentence so softened. In those days the impossible was possible — a paradox? oh, of course. The perfection of those days was, that they were full of paradoxes. No democracy will ever compass the immensity of Hope, the vastness of Possibility, with which the Church of those ages filled the lives of the poorest poor. Not hope spiritual only, but hope terrestrial, hope material and substantial. A swineherd, glad to gnaw the husks that his pigs left, might become the Viceregent of Christ, and spurn emperors prostrate before his throne. The most famished student who girt his lean loins to pass the gates of Pavia or Ravenna, knew that if he bowed his head for the tonsure he might live to lift it in a pontiffs arrogance in the mighty reality and the yet mightier metaphor of a Canosa. The abuses of the mediaeval Church have been gibbeted in every language; but I doubt if the wonderful absolute equality which that Church actually contained and caused has ever been sufficiently remembered. Then only think how great it was to be great in those years, when men were fresh enough of heart to feel emotion and not ashamed to show it. Think of Petrarca’s entry into Rome; think of the superb life of Raffael; think of the crowds that hung on the lips of the Improvisatori; think of the influence of S. Bruno, of S. Bernard, of S. Francis; think of the enormous power on his generation of Fra Girolamo! And if one were not great at all, but only a sort of brute with stronger sinews than most men, what a fearless and happy brute one might be, riding with Hawkwood’s Lances, or fighting with the Black Bands! Whilst, if one were a peaceable, gentle soul, with a turn for art and grace, what a calm, tender life one might lead in little, old, quiet cities, painting praying saints on their tiptoes, or moulding marriage-plates in majolica! It must have been such a great thing to live when the world was still all open-eyed with wonder at itself, like a child on its sixth birthday. Nowadays, science makes a great discovery; the tired world yawns, feels its pockets, and only asks, ‘Will it pay?’ Galileo ran the risk of the stake, and Giordano Bruno suffered at it; but I think that chance of the faggots must have been better to bear than the languid apathy and the absorbed avarice of the present age, which is chiefly tolerant because it has no interest except in new invented ways for getting money and for spending it.”
Then, moralising thus, he had sliced the papone, and we had made our morning feast before the matins bell had rung over the little ancient deserted town.
The birds had been singing under the broad green leaves above our heads, the sunshine was sweet and clear upon the old towers and the worn grey stones; in the stillness the little torrents made sad rushing sounds; across the piazza went an old monk and a little barefoot child with her arms round a golden pumpkin.
That was all — all — where once the last battle of free Florence had been fought out and lost It was one of those tranquil, innocent, joyous days, which had so little in them, and yet so much, days of bright weather, of tireless feet, of innocent dreams, of unspeakable gladness, days when the whole land was before us to stray at fancy, and the people made us welcome from the one sea-shore to the other.
When our morning meal was over, and the wrinkled rinds of the melons flung to the black pig that had strayed out of a house by the church and borne us company, sniffing for chestnuts where the last javelin had pierced Ferruccio, we left the little town upon its spur of wooded rock, and sauntered out by the Porta Piavana down the leafy ways to Pistoia, whither the Arte had gone on backs of mules before us, and where Pascarèl intended to act that night Pistoia was but a small place, but it was in a humble way a city, and the people a month or two before had made a fus with me there, and had gathered under the casement of the locanda to listen to me singing within, and had cheered and applauded me half through the night I begged to be seen on the stage there, but Pascarèl was, as on all other occasions, inexorable.
“Why is not for me?” I argued with him. “Surely it is good enough for your sister, why is it not good enough for mei.”
His face flushed, and as we walked along the road, by the foaming water, he cut impatiently at the tall canes that grew by the side of the stones.
“What has that to do with it!” he answered me. “Brunétta is a silly little thing, whose feet are the cleverest part about her; she cannot read, she cannot be harmed, she is happy in her humble estate. But you — in time to come — be a great singer, if you will. There will be nothing to hinder you. But you shall not do your future such an ill-turn as to be seen on my stage whilst you are too young to know all the risk you would run, and all the tarnish you would gain. Besides, your father lives, no doubt, though we find no tidings of him. I do not choose to take the chance of one day being upbraided by him for having allowed his daughter to show herself in a booth amongst strolling players, whilst she was too much of a baby to dream of the life-long injury that she wrought herself.”
