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A TUSCAN 
 CHILDHOOD 
 
A TUSCAN 
 CHILDHOOD 
 
 BY 
 
 LISI CIPRIANI 
 
 
 "U ' ™ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1907 
 
LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 Two Cooles Received 
 
 SEF 20 I90f 
 
 class a ' xxc.,w>. 
 
 COPY 
 
 7 
 
 ^ 
 &£ 
 
 Copyright, 1907, by 
 The Century Co. 
 
 Published October, iqo 7 
 
 THE OE VINME PRESS 
 
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
 TO MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 i The Notes 3 
 
 ii Our English 17 
 
 in How the Children Hallowed a 
 
 Cemetery 29 
 
 iv On Dolls 43 
 
 v My Mother and Her Doll 59 
 
 vi My Mother and Her Lamb 91 
 
 vn On Discipline and its Results . . .113 
 vin A Child's Point of View . . „ . .131 
 
 ix Leaves in the Storm 145 
 
 x Teresa and the Cat 171 
 
 xi The Foundling 187 
 
 xn Mama's Ravens 205 
 
 xm My Popolo 227 
 
 xiv Other Playmates . 247 
 
 xv The End .265 
 
I 
 
 THE NOTES 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 THE NOTES 
 
 WHEN I was still a wee child 
 I began my first diary. The 
 few pages of these diaries 
 that have been preserved are valuable 
 material to me now. I also started a 
 family history, beginning with my own 
 birth. This family history, which never 
 covered more than three pages of large 
 foolscap paper, gives the following items 
 as I remember them not too far away 
 from the time when the events actually 
 took place. 
 
 I first discuss the date of my birth : "Of 
 course, I do not remember myself if the 
 C3] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 date is exact, and as Papa and Mama do 
 not agree on the subject, I shall never 
 know if I was born fifteen minutes before 
 or fifteen minutes after midnight — either 
 on the fourth or on the fifth of July. As 
 my birthday has always been celebrated 
 on the fifth, I ought to stick to that. But, 
 on the other hand, as I find out that I am 
 in the habit of being late, I suppose the 
 Lord told me to come fifteen minutes be- 
 fore midnight, but I was late, and got there 
 fifteen minutes after." 
 
 This reference to one's birth is so clas- 
 sically customary in English literature, 
 that there seems no reason to omit it from 
 my autobiography. 
 
 The notes continue: "I was considered 
 an uninteresting child. If I had been the 
 only one, it might have been different, but 
 I unfortunately was born in the middle of 
 seven, and it is only the oldest and the 
 youngest who count. Besides, they were 
 
 C43 
 
THE NOTES 
 
 all brighter than I was. If I had my 
 choice, I should always take a place at the 
 head or the tail of a large family. You 
 always get the worst of it if you are in the 
 middle. You have to give in to the older 
 children because they are older, and you 
 have to give in to the younger because 
 they are so little" 
 
 This is pathetic. I might have added 
 that as the Bible says that the last 
 shall be first, and the first shall be last, 
 those "at the head and the tail" have some 
 hope of relief, if their present situation is 
 not satisfactory; but those who are in 
 the middle have evidently no prospect of 
 change and must bear their trials for- 
 ever. 
 
 The notes continue: "My first vivid 
 recollection is of a sound whipping for 
 having eaten sugar, or rather, to be exact, 
 stolen sugar out of the sugar-basin, every 
 evening when we came back from our 
 
 C5] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 walk, profiting of the moment when every- 
 body went to take off hats and jackets. I 
 do not remember how my misdeed was 
 discovered, but of nothing else have I been 
 ashamed as of that." 
 
 I make an unchanged literal quotation, 
 and as this was written by a little Tuscan 
 without view of publication, the English 
 may be allowed to stand. 
 
 "At that time we were only five chil- 
 dren, and I can say that my memoirs begin 
 before I was quite four. The first impor- 
 tant event that took place at that time was 
 the birth of my fourth brother. I remem- 
 ber distinctly the arrival of the peasant 
 woman who was to nurse him, and I also 
 remember how one morning we were all 
 called into Mama's bedroom. We were 
 placed in a row according to height, and 
 then a very tiny little thing was shown to 
 us. The nurse made him smile by touch- 
 ing his under lip with her little finger. We 
 
 C6] 
 
THE NOTES 
 
 all were allowed to look at him by turns, 
 and were then marched out of the room, 
 conscious that we were six instead of five." 
 The birth of Baby (his real name was 
 Caesar Livy, but he was called "Baby" to 
 the end of his little life) was a subject of 
 great interest to me. I remember also how 
 unduly I profited by the event. This needs 
 quite a lengthy explanation. Ritchie and 
 I, who belonged to the nursery, had one 
 rocking-horse in common — a big horse, 
 but still we only used it one at a time. The 
 rules and regulations of the household 
 were explicit in every detail. We, "the 
 little ones," had breakfast at eight. At 
 half past eight breakfast was supposed to 
 be finished, and at nine the carriage called 
 to take us to the park, where we played 
 till twelve o'clock, when the carriage 
 would come to take us home again. From 
 half past eight to nine was the time for the 
 rocking-horse, and naturally this time 
 
 [73 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 should have been shared equally between 
 Ritchie and myself. 
 
 Baby's birth made me see a way of en- 
 joying the rocking-horse myself for the 
 full half-hour. For almost two weeks I 
 set Ritchie, who was a year younger than 
 myself, watching at the door of my moth- 
 er's bedroom in hopes of being the first to 
 see a new baby; not Caesar Livy, but ac- 
 tually a seventh addition to the family — 
 probably a girl. 
 
 Poor little Ritchie waited patiently day 
 by day, refusing his turn on the rocking- 
 horse. The explanation I would give him 
 for the non-arrival of the new little baby 
 was : "They probably could not find a wet- 
 nurse; they surely will find one to-mor- 
 row." And for two weeks I enjoyed the 
 rocking-horse all to myself. 
 
 But tricks never pay, and when Ann, 
 our English nurse, found out how, to use 
 an American expression, I had stuffed my 
 
 can 
 
THE NOTES 
 
 brother, I in turn had to give up the rock- 
 ing-horse to him for many days. 
 
 The notes continue to tell that for 
 Ritchie and me "the children" were the 
 oldest three in the family, and they were 
 entirely separated from us, under the rule 
 of the German governess. Alick, who 
 came just before me, was allowed to spend 
 his play and lunch hour with us. 
 Promptly at twelve, when we had re- 
 turned from our drive, Ritchie and I 
 would present ourselves at the school- 
 room door, and fearfully face the govern- 
 ess with the question — "May Alick come 
 to eat his panam}" Panam being a child- 
 ishly Anglicized form of the Italian word 
 for bread. 
 
 It was not long after this that Ritchie, 
 who was not yet four, got into trouble 
 about his wife and his seven children. 
 The catastrophe was quite unexpected. 
 One day Ritchie and I were called in for 
 
 [9] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 dessert after my father and mother had 
 had their evening dinner. Some German 
 friends had been dining with them, and 
 while we were nibbling at a wee bit of an 
 orange, the conversation drifted to the 
 Siege of Paris, recalling its horrors. 
 
 The talk was suddenly interrupted by a 
 howl from Ritchie : 
 
 "My wife and my seven children! My 
 wife and my seven children!" 
 
 "What wife and what seven children?" 
 was the astonished question which met 
 him on every side. 
 
 "My wife and my seven children. They 
 have probably died of hunger, too." 
 
 With much difficulty my mother found 
 out that Ritchie claimed to have a wife 
 and seven children living at Paris. He 
 minutely told their names, their ages, their 
 appearance, and their dispositions. He 
 had been eagerly listening to the account 
 of the horrible famine during the siege, 
 
THE NOTES 
 
 and nothing could convince him now that 
 his family had not undergone these hard- 
 ships. 
 
 My mother, with one of her inspira- 
 tions, finally satisfied him by having a 
 plate filled with all kinds of good things to 
 eat, and ordering the butler to take it at 
 once to Paris to Master Ritchie's wife and 
 seven children. The next step was to send 
 for a physician to find out whether a baby 
 could be insane. The physician fortu- 
 nately decided that the boy's sanity need 
 not be questioned. A closer investigation 
 brought out the fact that Ann had amused 
 the child by telling him imaginary tales 
 about this wife and these seven children, 
 and that Ritchie firmly believed that they 
 really existed, nor could my mother's rea- 
 soning shake his conviction in the least. 
 
 The nurse was cautioned not to enter- 
 tain him in such a way again, and we chil- 
 dren were instructed never to mention a 
 
 en] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 wife and seven children in Ritchie's pres- 
 ence. For days afterward he wept in fear 
 that his Parisian family had not had 
 enough to eat, and for years we made it a 
 point to whisper to each other, and not let 
 Ritchie know what we were talking about, 
 whenever we remembered the possibility 
 of any one having a wife and seven chil- 
 dren. 
 
 I also remember that he had called his 
 third boy Peter, and that this struck me as 
 showing bad taste. I thought that Alfred, 
 Arthur or Harold would be preferable. 
 
 The only other incident the notes men- 
 tion is my crime. 'Though now I am far 
 from being passionate, I then did some- 
 thing which must have given my parents 
 a very bad idea of my future character. 
 One day after dinner I was losing so much 
 time in folding my napkin that somebody 
 told Mathew to come and help me. I do 
 not know whether his doing it in a bad 
 
THE NOTES 
 
 manner made me angry, or whether my 
 little dignity felt offended by the idea of 
 help. When he came near me I jumped 
 up on my chair, and picked up a knife 
 from the table, menacing to use it if any 
 one attempted to snatch the napkin from 
 my hands. Of course, I was taken away, 
 whipped and otherwise punished, and a 
 big fuss was made over it. Many times 
 afterward I have thought of it with a sort 
 of horror, wondering if it were enough to 
 send me to Hell. It certainly was a 
 strange thing for me to do ; all the more as 
 it is the only incident of hot temper that I 
 remember. As a general thing I always 
 did boil, and always do boil, inside." 
 
 This ends my attempt to write a family 
 history. 
 
 nan 
 
II 
 
 OUR ENGLISH 
 
II 
 
 OUR ENGLISH 
 
 MY mother was a woman with the- 
 ories, and one of her theories 
 was that English women make 
 the best nurses in the world. In order to 
 have us well-washed, well-fed, and other- 
 wise well-groomed, she established an 
 English nursery. 
 
 From the hands of our Italian wet-nurse 
 we passed into those of the English. Of 
 our Italian nurse I shall speak again later. 
 
 The English language was, therefore, 
 practically our first tongue. We learned 
 to read in English, and the Mother Goose 
 rhymes were as familiar to us as they 
 could be to any child born in the British 
 Islands. Even our Italian names were 
 Anglicized. 
 
 civ: 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 We liked the English influence thor- 
 oughly, while later we strenuously ob- 
 jected to our German governesses and tu- 
 tors. 
 
 Our food was English. We had rare 
 roast beef every single day, and a fondness 
 for rare roast beef even now marks one 
 distinct class of Italians. 
 
 Our clothes were English. We had to 
 wear sunbonnets, and our little dresses 
 left our necks and arms bare. Even our 
 socks and our low shoes were distinctly 
 English. All these things in those days 
 were uncommon, but now they have been 
 generally adopted by Italian parents. 
 
 As soon as we were old enough we had 
 to take English long walks. Two hours 
 every day we tramped along, one, by turn 
 the victim, walking with the governess, 
 while the others walked, paired off, in 
 front. If the governess took five of us out 
 walking, one of us would walk with her, 
 
 CIS] 
 
OUR ENGLISH 
 
 while the other four, the envied ones, could 
 walk ahead two by two, talking to each 
 other about anything they liked — though 
 the governess was German, when out 
 walking we were always allowed to speak 
 English. My mother never allowed us to 
 speak Italian on the street. I may add 
 that the English long walks had to be kept 
 up by the German governesses. 
 
 The English influence has been a last- 
 ing one in our lives. Though it came 
 early, and in number of years was not as 
 long as that of our German instructors, it 
 contributed far more to the molding of our 
 characters, to a certain attitude of life, and 
 to our likes and dislikes of a good many 
 things. 
 
 The English language passed through 
 us corrupted to the Italian maids. There 
 were some words absolutely peculiar to 
 our household. One was a mixture of the 
 word Bismarck, which the popular mind 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 evidently connected with the German gov- 
 erness, and the expression bad mark, which 
 was introduced by the English nurse. 
 Anyway, the Italian maids would, if we 
 were naughty, give us a kind warning: 
 "Look out, look out! Or they '11 give you 
 a bismacche" ; bismacche in their minds 
 standing for a reprimand and a whipping. 
 By a curious coincidence, four of us 
 had the same wet-nurse. She was a 
 woman of remarkable character, and no 
 English nurse, however excellent, could 
 have done better by us than she did. She 
 certainly cooperated bravely in teaching 
 us to speak the truth, and not to be afraid 
 of a whipping once we had brought it 
 upon us. Yet, though to all appearances 
 she submitted to the strictness of our for- 
 eign education, she suffered much to see 
 it enforced. I have no doubt she would 
 willingly have taken all whippings to her- 
 self if such a thing had been permissible. 
 [20] 
 
OUR ENGLISH 
 
 I must say, however, that I remember no 
 friction between Italian and English in the 
 household, while there always was trouble 
 between the Italians and the Germans. 
 
 Our own English, though I suppose very 
 correct for foreigners, was occasionally 
 picturesque, and the picturesqueness was 
 due to our Italian origin. I remember that 
 Baby, when he was a little older, one day 
 rushed up to my mother, exclaiming: 
 "Mama, Mama! The fire has run away," 
 meaning that it had gone out. 
 
 I do not remember any confusion of 
 languages, though certain double mean- 
 ings in English troubled me. One word, 
 which it took me a long time to under- 
 stand, was the word pale. I had a pail 
 and a spade to play with in the sand on 
 the seashore, and I distinctly remember 
 my amazement at hearing my mother ask- 
 ing a friend of hers: "Don't you think the 
 child looks pale to-day?" 
 
 C213 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 It was a well-enforced rule with us that 
 we should ask no questions, and I never 
 asked what I had to do with the pail. 
 
 When I was still a very young child, 
 and I had my first German governess, I 
 confused certain words that sounded alike 
 in both languages. My mother having 
 once promised to take us to a catacomb at 
 Leghorn, where some bones, said to have 
 belonged to early Christians, had just been 
 discovered, I rushed up to my governess 
 saying in German that Mama was going to 
 take us to see die Bohnen der Todten. 
 The poor woman was puzzled to know 
 what we were going to do with the beans 
 of the dead. She had not been in Italy 
 long, and was evidently still much per- 
 plexed at Italian manners and customs. 
 
 Another time the same governess asked 
 me to get her ein Besen. I rushed out of 
 the room, and soon returned with the 
 nurse bringing not a broom, but a basin. 
 
 C22H 
 
OUR ENGLISH 
 
 A favorite story of our nursery days we 
 used to illustrate dramatically: "An Eng- 
 lishman made a German a present. The 
 German expressed his thanks by saying 
 'Danke sehr! The Englishman, who un- 
 derstood it to mean Donkey, sir, and felt 
 duly offended, challenged the German to 
 a duel, and killed him." Ritchie and I 
 acted this out many times, though some- 
 times we had to give up playing this game, 
 because neither of us would consent to be 
 the German. Our sympathies were al- 
 ways with the English. 
 
 It is remarkable, however, that learning 
 several languages, for we spoke four be- 
 fore we were seven, we should never con- 
 fuse them. The examples I give above are 
 exceptions to the rule. I remember very, 
 very few cases in which there was any 
 confusion of languages at all, though I do 
 remember learning the full meaning of 
 single words in my own language, Italian, 
 [23] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 long after I had heard these words used. 
 If we had been allowed to freely ask ques- 
 tions, even this difficulty would have been 
 avoided. 
 
 It is very interesting, too, that when 
 children are taught English and another 
 foreign language, like German, besides, 
 they invariably prefer the English lan- 
 guage to any other. This is hard to ex- 
 plain. It is not hard to explain, however, 
 that they should like their English nurses. 
 I myself have the kindest recollections of, 
 and the kindest esteem for, those I can 
 remember. 
 
 I also look upon this English influence 
 in our childhood as a most desirable one. 
 My first book was Mrs. Edgeworth's 
 "Frank," and I believe that it would be 
 worse for me if I had not begun life on 
 "When Frank was five years old his 
 mother gave him a book." 
 
 I have always kept a fondness and an 
 C24] 
 
OUR ENGLISH 
 
 understanding for Maria Edgeworth, 
 which, to my regret, most English-speak- 
 ing people nowadays do not share. Even 
 to-day I can read her children's stories 
 and her novels with keen pleasure, and 
 feel like valiantly breaking a lance in her 
 defense when any one compares her dis- 
 paragingly to Jane Austen. 
 
 My admiration for Wordsworth proved 
 less lasting. One of the first poems I re- 
 member learning is "We are Seven." I 
 delighted in that, and insisted upon learn- 
 ing— 
 
 The dew was falling fast, 
 The stars began to blink, 
 I heard a voice that said 
 Drink, pretty creature, drink. 
 
 My fondness for Wordsworth exhausted 
 
 itself with those two poems. I never have 
 
 succeeded in reading him with pleasure 
 
 since, though the Lord knows that I have 
 
 [25] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 tried hard enough to develop a due appre- 
 ciation. 
 
 Italian children nowadays are generally 
 taught German instead of English, be- 
 cause good English nurses and good Eng- 
 lish governesses are so hard to get. I 
 think it fortunate for us that the English 
 care came first, for the Germans instruct, 
 but the English educate. 
 
 C26] 
 
Ill 
 
 HOW THE CHILDREN HALLOWED A 
 CEMETERY 
 
Ill 
 
 HOW THE CHILDREN HALLOWED A 
 CEMETERY 
 
 OUR fondness for our living pets 
 was great, but it was equaled 
 by the interest we took in giv- 
 ing our special favorites honorable burial. 
 The sparrow Ritchie stepped on and killed 
 received special funeral honors, not be- 
 cause particularly worthy of it, but be- 
 cause I had to be comforted in my unre- 
 strained sorrow. I drenched half a dozen 
 handkerchiefs with my tears. 
 
 We were spending the winter at the 
 Villa of Pisa. Imagine a pretty villa built 
 on the banks of the Arno and facing the 
 south. Before it were two magnolia trees, 
 as tall as the house itself, that in summer 
 were full of large white blossoms, yet even 
 in winter looked fresh and strong, with 
 
 C293 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 shining dark green leaves; then, several 
 tea-rose trees, from nine to twelve feet 
 high, that all winter long were laden with 
 blossoms. 
 
 The garden ran along the famous pub- 
 lic drive, the Piagge, and was inclosed by 
 iron railings that allowed any passer-by to 
 look in. Foreigners particularly would 
 stop to admire the wonderful bloom of 
 these trees. Frequently we were allowed 
 to give total strangers, if they were Eng- 
 lish or German, large bunches of roses, 
 handing them through the railing. 
 
 Out of the chinks on the sidewalk be- 
 fore the house grew big bunches of 
 mignonette, while the beds of violets all 
 along the railing scented the air. 
 
 This was our front garden, where we 
 had to stay most of the time, because it 
 was sunny, but we had to be careful, and 
 this was, I suppose, the prime reason why 
 none of us cared for the Villa of Pisa, 
 C30] 
 
IN A CEMETERY 
 
 while we all adored the Villa of Leghorn, 
 where only a small section of the garden 
 was not ours to do as we liked. 
 
 The back garden, to the north side of 
 the house, was chilly and gloomy. Its 
 principal charm was a row of beautiful 
 camellia trees, but we only cared for a 
 large cypress tree, under which we had 
 been allowed to make a cemetery. 
 
 Here cats, dogs and birds were buried, 
 and small marble slabs gave their name 
 and the date of their death. Pisa is near 
 Carrara, and marble is no great luxury. I 
 must also conscientiously state that the 
 epitaphs were put on in paint or ink, and 
 that they generally lasted only a short 
 while. When the rain had washed the 
 marble clean, it was often used over again. 
 The cemetery, moreover, was not more 
 than two or three square yards. This so 
 that nobody may receive an erroneous im- 
 pression of magnificence. 
 
 [31: 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 The tragedy of the sparrow was a sim- 
 ple one. I was sitting on the door-step 
 watching my little sparrow hop around. 
 Ritchie, a chubby little fellow, came run- 
 ning along, and stepped upon my sparrow. 
 He killed it. I howled inconsolably, until 
 "the children," who were just through 
 their lessons, volunteered not only a mag- 
 nificent funeral, but a slab which should 
 tell of Ritchie's crime forever. 
 
 I do not know who composed the epi- 
 taph, but I remember it distinctly, and 
 shall remember it, I think, till my dying 
 day. It said: 
 
 "Riccino, 
 Assassino, 
 Ammazzo 
 L'uccellino." 
 
 Englished: "Little Ritchie, assassin, 
 killed the little bird." 
 
 I cannot remember if Ritchie took the 
 matter to heart. 
 
 C32] 
 
IN A CEMETERY 
 
 The death of the sparrow led to some- 
 what unusual complications; at least, I 
 have never heard of any other children 
 getting into trouble in the same way. 
 
 That Pisa is well-known for its antiqui- 
 ties, it would be superfluous to mention, 
 but the indirect influence of these antiqui- 
 ties on our school-room could scarcely be 
 understood without a full explanation. 
 
 I have mentioned that my mother was a 
 woman with theories, and that she thought 
 English nurses were the best fitted to keep 
 children well-washed, well-fed, and gener- 
 ally well-groomed. But when it came to 
 the intellectual development of the child 
 mind, she, being a German herself, 
 thought that German training stood first, 
 and our governesses and tutors were, with 
 few exceptions, always German. She in- 
 sisted upon their having excellent diplo- 
 mas, and, indeed, engaged no tutor who 
 did not have a university degree. 
 C33] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 Now, Italy, for many and various rea- 
 sons, has always been the land that Ger- 
 mans dream of. Some long for it as the 
 ideal place for a wedding-trip, others long 
 for its climate, others for its art treasures, 
 and others long for it for special reasons, 
 as to study old Latin epitaphs, or to work 
 out some particular point in architecture. 
 
 Our tutors were usually young men 
 who profited of a chance to come to Italy 
 in order to pursue their own studies side 
 by side with their teaching. My mother 
 engaged a young man who had brilliantly 
 finished his university career, and who 
 wished to come to us principally because 
 we spent the most severe part of the win- 
 ter at Pisa, where he could work out some 
 point in connection with the sarcophagi, 
 which still can be seen in Pisa's old ceme- 
 tery. But this was discovered later. 
 
 He ruled the school-room with a rod of 
 iron ; in fact, he was dismissed for break- 
 
 [34;] 
 
IN A CEMETERY 
 
 ing a heavy ruler on my brother's shoul- 
 der. It was he, by the way, who, not 
 being allowed to whip my sister, used to 
 whip one of the boys every time she did 
 something wrong. She was expected to 
 pay them one cent for it, but, with patri- 
 cian contempt for money, the boys stood 
 the whipping, and refused to be paid. 
 
 Instead of taking the children for the 
 customary English two-hour walk through 
 the beautiful country around our villa, the 
 German student-instructor took them 
 every single day to the old cemetery. 
 
 You remember it, no doubt — a large 
 square filled with holy earth, brought at 
 the time of the Crusades from Jerusalem, 
 and all around it the beautiful arcade, 
 decorated with the wonderful frescos, 
 which people from all over the world come 
 to see. Baedeker marks the Camposanto 
 with three stars. 
 
 The children tried to amuse themselves 
 C35] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 as best they could. They played hide- 
 and-seek behind the sarcophagi, those 
 which the student did not happen to be 
 studying, of course. They examined the 
 frescos in detail, and described them 
 graphically to us little ones when they got 
 home. Particularly did they dwell on the 
 fat, naked monk, almost rent apart by the 
 angel and the devil struggling to gain pos- 
 session of him. 
 
 But the frescos and tombstones very 
 soon lost all charm, and after a while they 
 were hard up for something to do. 
 
 You will ask: "How could they be kept 
 two hours every day in a cemetery? Did 
 the man have no sense? And what did 
 your father and mother say about it?" 
 
 I can reply: "Alas! German educators 
 have often plenty of uncommon, and just 
 as often very little common, sense. As for 
 my father and mother — the rules were 
 just as strict concerning our asking ques- 
 £361 
 
IN A CEMETERY 
 
 tions as they were concerning complaints 
 about anything our instructors pleased to 
 do. My father and mother had no idea 
 that the children spent their afternoons at 
 the church-yard." 
 
 It happened now that the funeral ser- 
 vices for my sparrow, combined with the 
 long hours spent at the Camposanto, fos- 
 tered a curious idea in the children's mind. 
 
 They began to think that after all our 
 own little cemetery did not amount to 
 much, and that something ought to be 
 done to make it more sacred. Finally they 
 devised a way. 
 
 In the square of the Camposanto that I 
 have mentioned as filled with holy ground, 
 thousands of men had been buried. In 
 one corner behind a large Roman urn was 
 a heap of human bones that demanded re- 
 burial. 
 
 The startling idea of the children was 
 this: If the holy earth from Jerusalem had 
 
 C373 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 made the Camposanto particularly holy, 
 why should it not make our own little 
 cemetery holy, too? If, moreover, they 
 added a generous supply of the Crusa- 
 ders' bones, surely nothing would be left 
 to be desired. So for several days the two 
 boys and my sister filled their pockets with 
 earth from Jerusalem and human bones, 
 that were carefully deposited in our play- 
 cemetery. 
 
 Unfortunately one day the tutor brought 
 them home somewhat late, and the bones 
 and earth had to be left in their pockets. 
 They were found by the nurse who at- 
 tended to their clothes. 
 
 Her horror was indescribable. Almost 
 howling she rushed to my mother, asking : 
 "What does the German tutor want the 
 signorini to do with the bones of the 
 dead? Of course, he is a heretic, but shall 
 he train the signorini to commit such sac- 
 rilege?" 
 
 [3811 
 
IN A CEMETERY 
 
 The tutor had to explain, and I do not 
 think he passed a pleasant quarter of an 
 hour. He had to admit that for many 
 weary weeks the children had spent their 
 walking time in the Camposanto; that he 
 had given no thought to what they were 
 doing. After that the English daily walks 
 were conscientiously resumed. 
 
 The bones, to the smallest bit, were care- 
 fully collected, and reverently taken back 
 to the corner of the Camposanto, where, 
 no doubt, they lie to this day. 
 
 C393 
 
IV 
 
 ON DOLLS 
 
IV 
 
 ON DOLLS 
 
 HAVING my place in the family 
 between two boys, I preferred 
 their amusements to my own, 
 and, on the whole, my interest in dolls was 
 not great. I did not care to play with 
 them unless my brothers joined me, and 
 this I could not often induce them to do. 
 
 Alick was fertile in luminous ideas, and 
 he had one inspiration which furnished 
 our elders endless merriment. It amused 
 even my father when he heard about it. 
 
 The documentary evidence is in my 
 possession to-day — a priceless treasure. 
 It is a sheet of heavy drawing paper, to 
 which passing years have imparted a yel- 
 lowish tinge which makes it look like 
 parchment. On this sheet, Alick, in his 
 
 C43] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 childish handwriting, has written in Ital- 
 ian, that he had drawn up a contract be- 
 tween Ritchie and me. According to the 
 contract, I selected Ritchie as the father 
 of my three daughters. There are two 
 clauses: First, it is distinctly understood 
 that the father may not touch the daugh- 
 ters without the permission of their 
 mother; if he ever does, the contract shall 
 be considered at an end; second, if the 
 father gives his daughters any presents 
 and does not state distinctly beforehand 
 that he may, at pleasure, take them back, 
 it shall not be permissible for him to take 
 back such presents; but the mother may 
 at her pleasure, confiscate them and ap- 
 propriate them to her own use. At the 
 bottom of this document are three signa- 
 tures : 
 
 Signature of the mother — Lisi; 
 Signature of the father — RiccL 
 Witness — Alick. 
 
 C44] 
 
ON DOLLS 
 
 There has been only one period in my 
 life when I played with dolls a good deal, 
 and this was when I was nine years old 
 and had to lie in bed ill most of the time 
 for a whole winter. I had eleven small 
 china dolls then, and these I organized 
 into a dramatic troupe. The object of my 
 dramatic performances was a revengeful 
 one, and this requires some explanation: 
 
 We had a governess, a German of 
 course, whom I particularly disliked. She 
 must have been a good teacher, judging 
 by some of our exercise books that still 
 exist, but she lacked tact, truthfulness, 
 and justice. The incident which first 
 roused in me an active dislike that never 
 ceased was characteristic. 
 
 One day in the history lesson Fraeulein 
 asked for a book. We were all in the 
 school-room, seated at the large walnut 
 study-table, we on stools, and Fraeulein 
 on a comfortable chair with a back to it. 
 [45] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 When Fraeulein asked for the book I at 
 once jumped up with the intention of get- 
 ting it out of the book-case. I had 
 scarcely reached the middle of the room 
 when Fraeulein shouted: 
 
 "Sit down!" 
 
 "Immediately," I answered, starting 
 back for the table. 
 
 "Not immediately — instantly!" was 
 the fierce, angry order. 
 
 I sat down on the floor. 
 
 This was one time my mother refused to 
 punish me when I was reported to her for 
 insolent behavior. 
 
 Fraeulein succeeded in drawing out the 
 worst in me. Never before and never 
 since do I remember showing such bitter- 
 ness and such contempt for any one. 
 
 Another time, when we were spending 
 
 the summer months at Leghorn, my 
 
 mother went to Germany and left Alick, 
 
 Ritchie, and me alone with Fraeulein. 
 
 C463 
 
ON DOLLS 
 
 Every evening we were allowed to go to 
 The Baths, where we met other children 
 with whom we could play. 
 
 Class distinctions are marked in Italy, 
 yet there is a certain democratic sentiment 
 which draws all people together on an 
 equal footing on the mere basis of culture 
 and education. Besides, whatever the 
 faults of Italians may be, they are not 
 snobs. The least snobbishness, the least 
 expressed consciousness of superiority 
 because of a difference in rank or posi- 
 tion, would have appeared unpardonable 
 to us. But we had an instinct that told us 
 whether people were nice or not. 
 
 Fraeulein lacked this instinct entirely, 
 and she became acquainted with several 
 Jewish women who, however respectable 
 they may have been, were decidedly vul- 
 gar. Now, while the Jews at Leghorn are 
 very numerous, and some of them no 
 doubt have many of the less desirable 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 characteristics of the Jewish race, there 
 are, however, Livornese Jews who are 
 highly educated, and who are treated as 
 equals by the most cultured people in 
 Italy. In fact, the prejudice against Jews 
 in Italy is not as strong as it is in America. 
 
 Fraeulein's friends lavished fulsome 
 flattery upon me. The climax was reached 
 when one of them, after extolling my 
 beauty, my clothes, my intelligence, asked 
 if she might kiss me. 
 
 "No," I answered. "Mama never 
 would allow it in the world." 
 
 Fraeulein was horrified, took me away 
 and punished me. Then she asked me: 
 
 "Why would you not let that nice lady 
 kiss you?" 
 
 "I don't like her," I said. "Besides, 
 she is a Jew." 
 
 "But," Fraeulein remonstrated, "don't 
 you know that even our Lord Jesus was 
 a Jew?" 
 
 £483 
 
ON DOLLS 
 
 "I know it," was the prompt reply. 
 "Jesus was good. I know he came on 
 earth poor and humble, when he might 
 have been a king, and he probably chose 
 to be a Jew so as to be as low and des- 
 picable as possible." 
 
 This sparring was not conducive to an 
 amiable understanding between Fraeu- 
 lein and me, and in the winter, when we 
 had left Leghorn, the breach grew wider 
 and wider. At that time — after a court- 
 ship which my mother did not know about 
 till long after I had discovered it, and 
 which had aroused my contempt — Fraeu- 
 lein became engaged to my brother's 
 Latin tutor. 
 
 She was as sentimental as a German 
 can possibly be, and that means beyond 
 description. Until she met this young 
 man her Schwaermerei had been divided 
 between Goethe and Unser Fritz. In 
 fact, she had the pictures of the three — 
 [49: 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 the greatest German poet, the Imperial 
 Crown Prince, and the Latin tutor — on 
 her bureau. In the evening before going 
 to bed she kissed them all, the last one 
 twice. The common-sense instilled by 
 our English nurses made me look upon 
 this performance as idiotic. 
 
 The dolls served me now to pay Fraeu- 
 lein back for all the unreasonable, unjust 
 punishments I had ever received. I or- 
 ganized them into a dramatic company, 
 those four and five inches long represent- 
 ing adults, those two and three inches 
 long representing children. I composed 
 only one cycle of plays, all centering about 
 Fraeulein and her love affairs. The prin- 
 cipal personages were, Fraeulein (who 
 being called Helena, Italian Elena, was 
 given the fictitious name of Balena, the 
 Italian for whale) ; her lover; Goethe; Un- 
 ser Fritz; and tradesmen, a butcher, a 
 baker, etc. The plot of my plays varied. 
 £50] 
 
ON DOLLS 
 
 We made our actors speak in German, 
 Italian, and English. Sometimes the 
 scene would be as follows: — 
 
 The governess and the tutor were pre- 
 sumed to have been married. The butcher 
 came with a bill : 
 
 She. 
 
 I need money to pay the butcher's bill. 
 
 He. 
 I have none, I never had any, and I 'm never 
 going to have any. 
 
 She. 
 But we must pay the bill, or we shall not have 
 anything to eat. 
 
 He. 
 Why don't you get somebody to give it to you? 
 
 She. 
 I shall try with Goethe. 
 
 (Exit He. Enter Goethe. The doll being china 
 could not be made to bend her knees, and as she 
 assumed a deferential position, generally had to 
 lie on her face.) 
 
 She. 
 Dear Goethe, I have loved you all my life. I 
 have kissed your picture every evening before 
 
 C5U 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 going to bed. Don't you think you ought to pay 
 my butcher's bill? 
 
 Goethe. 
 I am writing poetry. I cannot pay butcher's 
 bills. 
 
 (Exit Goethe. Enter He). 
 He. 
 Has Goethe paid the butcher's bill? 
 
 She. 
 No, he has not. The butcher will not give us 
 any more meat, and we shall have nothing to eat 
 for dinner. 
 
 He. 
 Why don't you ask Unser Fritz to pay the 
 butcher's bill? 
 
 She. 
 I shall do so. 
 
 (Exit He. Enter Unser Fritz.) 
 Unser Fritz. 
 "What do you wish? 
 
 She. 
 I have loved you all my life. I have always said 
 you were the handsomest man in the world. I 
 have kissed your picture every evening before 
 going to bed. Don't you think you ought to pay 
 my butcher's bill? 
 
 [52] 
 
ON DOLLS 
 
 Unser Fritz. 
 Of course I shall, gladly and at once. Here is 
 money, take it! 
 
 She. 
 Thank you, thank you, Unser Fritz. Hence- 
 forth every night I shall kiss your picture twice 
 and Goethe's on'y once. 
 
 (Exit Unser Fritz. Enter He.) 
 
 She. 
 
 Unser Fritz paid the butcher's bill. 
 
 (The two dolls join hands, and are made to 
 dance around the improvised stage, crying: 
 "Happy Gee Gee!") 
 
 There were numerous variations to this 
 scene, and other highly sensational plots, 
 conjugal quarrels particularly, in which 
 He invariably threw at Her a fork, which 
 was said to stick in her cheek. The spec- 
 tators had to use their imagination be- 
 cause, being a china doll, a realistic carry- 
 ing out of the scene was out of the ques- 
 tion. 
 
 These performances often used to be 
 [53] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 given when I was lying in my little bed 
 alone most of the day. The stage was an 
 invalid's table that could be put right be- 
 fore me. Only at the play-hour, after 
 dinner, were my two little brothers, Alick 
 and Ritchie, allowed to come in and keep me 
 company. Then the real performance was 
 given. The dramatic work done when I was 
 alone might be considered as rehearsals. 
 
 Once or twice Fraeulein was an unwill- 
 ing witness. She burst into tears, calling 
 me names. When my mother finally 
 found out about it, even this German 
 governess went her way. 
 
 But she had scarcely had all she de- 
 served. To save herself trouble, she had 
 done intellectually with me what some 
 wretched women in poverty-stricken fac- 
 tory districts do materially with their 
 babies. They poison their babies with 
 brandy in order to keep them asleep and 
 quiet — Fraeulein risked poisoning my 
 
 C54] 
 
ON DOLLS 
 
 mind with the most sentimental, sensa- 
 tional German novels in order to spare 
 herself trouble and keep me satisfied dur- 
 ing a winter of illness. 
 
 Volume after volume of the German 
 periodicals, Die Gartenlaube and Ueber 
 Land und Meer, did I swallow — swallow 
 is the only suitable word. The triangle 
 situation — husband, wife, and the objec- 
 tionable third — was familiar to me, and, 
 in fact, my idea of the trouble about 
 household bills did not come from home 
 experiences, but from the trite parental 
 speeches against love in a cottage found 
 in the novels I had read. 
 
 Most of Auerbach's novels I had at my 
 disposal, and The Villa on the Rhine, in 
 which a German tutor comes to the United 
 States and joins the Northerners during 
 the War of the Rebellion, inspired me 
 with deep-felt sympathy for the South, 
 which has lived on to this day, though, 
 C55] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 with my long experience in the North, I 
 have taken a very different view of the 
 Yankees. But my first impressions were 
 — the North for German tutors, the South 
 for people who had no use for them, ergo 
 my sympathies were all with the South. 
 
 My gratitude for my early English edu- 
 cation is particularly strong, because I 
 think that without it this period of novel 
 reading (I was still little more than a 
 baby) might have been pernicious. As it 
 was, it only developed an almost unrea- 
 sonable and unjust scorn for Germans, 
 whom I judged entirely by my gover- 
 nesses and the heroes and heroines of the 
 periodicals I had read. Only much later 
 did I learn to value the German people 
 for the sincerity of their feeling, their 
 earnestness and their scholarship. But, 
 curiously enough, it has been in America 
 that I have grown nearer to this land of 
 my fathers, for I must not forget that I 
 am part German myself. 
 [56] 
 
V 
 
 MY MOTHER AND HER DOLL 
 
V 
 
 MY MOTHER AND HER DOLL 
 
 THE best doll story in the family- 
 is about my mother and her doll. 
 This becomes a reminiscence of 
 my own childhood, because of all the 
 stories I then heard, it was my favorite 
 one. 
 
 Having mentioned the fact that I was 
 considered an uninteresting child, it will 
 surprise no reader if the best stories are 
 not about myself. 
 
 My mother was born at Leghorn. Leg- 
 horn is the ugly duckling among the hun- 
 dred cities of beautiful Italy that our 
 poets write about. We consider Leghorn 
 a new place, because its existence as a 
 real city dates back only four or five hun- 
 dred years, and we ascribe its lack of ar- 
 C59] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 tistic interest to its newness. Old age, 
 like everything else, is relative. 
 
 Before the days of United Italy, Leg- 
 horn was a free port, and was far more 
 important and prosperous than it is now. 
 In those days it gave its name to Leghorn 
 chickens and Leghorn hats. Moreover, 
 travelers by land and sea used to stop 
 there on their way to Southern Italy, and 
 many English personages mention Leg- 
 horn in the account of their travels. 
 
 Toward the middle of the last century 
 my grandfather was German Consul- 
 General at Leghorn, and he was a most 
 remarkable man; not only remarkable, 
 but distinctly original. 
 
 He came of Saxon parentage, and as 
 far as I can make out, of small landed 
 nobility. He was the youngest of twenty- 
 four children, all of one mother, and nine- 
 teen of whom sat at table at one time. 
 This, according to modern scientific theo- 
 
 C60] 
 
MOTHERANDHERDOLL 
 
 ries, may account for the strength of 
 character which he developed. Reared 
 on Germanic ideas as to the authority of 
 the elders, the child who lives through 
 being bossed by twenty-three brothers and 
 sisters, and other relatives and friends 
 whom we can presume existed, can surely 
 be accepted as an instance of the survival 
 of the fittest, who, not being crushed, 
 probably developed abnormal tenacity. 
 
 Moreover, his childhood coincided with 
 the terrible Napoleonic wars. Three of 
 his brothers fell in the Battle of Luetzen. 
 This would have been enough to make 
 him dislike the French, for you can 
 hardly be expected to feel friendly toward 
 a nation that kills off your relatives whole- 
 sale; but this was the least. 
 
 The French were once quartered on his 
 father's little estate, and some brutal, 
 drunken soldiers kicked his mother down- 
 stairs, causing injuries from which she 
 
 [01 3 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 never recovered. This made the consul- 
 general hate the French, and, because of 
 their relation to them, all the Latin races. 
 If he had not hated the French and the 
 Latin races, this story of my mother and 
 her doll could never have been written. 
 
 Being the youngest of the twenty-four 
 children of a German country gentleman 
 with a diminutive estate, it stands to rea- 
 son that he had to make a living. For- 
 eign military service was almost the only 
 profession open to the impecunious young 
 nobleman. He entered the English navy, 
 in which he served creditably for several 
 years. He finally resigned, and joined a 
 brother at Leghorn. Though it would 
 perhaps be interesting to tell how this 
 brother got to Leghorn, why my grand- 
 father joined him, and how he finally be- 
 came consul-general, it would take me too 
 far away from my subject — My Mother 
 and Her Doll — and I must leave such de- 
 [62] 
 
MOTHERANDHERDOLL 
 
 tails in order to plunge just as soon as 
 possible in media res. I cannot do this, 
 however, without at least telling that he 
 had great luck, for he married a pretty, 
 rich young Italian girl of good family. 
 
 They had a little girl — my mother. 
 
 The consul-general in some ways was 
 distinctly queer. He left home before the 
 child was born, saying that if it was a boy 
 he would come back; if it was a girl he 
 would not. He evidently did not plan to 
 have as large a family as his father had 
 had before him, and considered this first 
 experiment final The child, as I have 
 said, proved to be a girl, and the consul- 
 general would not come home. He stayed 
 away for eighteen months, until they sent 
 him a beautiful miniature of the baby. 
 The sight of the baby face — an exception- 
 ally beautiful one, too — evidently awoke 
 the consul-general's paternal feelings, and 
 he returned to his own home, relieving the 
 [63 3 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 vice-consul of the extra duties the poor 
 fellow had been compelled to carry. 
 
 I have tried to show how environment 
 in early youth developed certain charac- 
 teristics of resistance, and made of him, 
 as a German friend of mine puts it, "a 
 much obstinate person." He gave in a 
 little, but very little. When he came back 
 he allowed himself to be fond of the child, 
 though it was a girl, but — and here his 
 queerness showed again — since he could 
 not get around the fact that she was 
 merely a girl, he simply controlled the 
 situation by bringing up the child exactly 
 as though she had been a boy. 
 
 Now, at Leghorn, seventy-three years 
 ago, to bring up the daughter of an 
 Italian mother as a boy was a tremendous 
 thing to do. Yet he did it, and not only 
 did it bravely, but successfully. The 
 child learned to speak four languages with 
 equal fluency, an unheard-of thing for 
 C64] 
 
MOTHERANDHERDOLL 
 
 girls to do in those days. She learned to 
 tramp for miles through the country, to 
 ride horseback and to swim, though then 
 young ladies hardly ever took long walks, 
 rode or swam. Just as soon as she was 
 old enough she was even made to study 
 bookkeeping and the elements of law. 
 Yet the crowning masculine accomplish- 
 ment was obtained when every Sunday 
 morning the Austrian drum-major was 
 summoned to make her beat the drum. 
 Then the consul-general was satisfied, for 
 he had got the best of destiny. 
 
 Evidently, however, there was a lurk- 
 ing Germanic sense of the proper sphere 
 of woman, and this showed in one phase 
 of the child's education. Part of the day 
 she was given in charge of two genteel 
 English women, who taught her the Eng- 
 lish language, and what they considered 
 the best of English manners. Incredible, 
 though true, she was actually taught to 
 [65] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 shape her mouth by saying prunes, plums 
 and prisms. She had to lie flat on her 
 back one hour each day; and she was 
 taught a primness of speech of which the 
 Italians are blissfully ignorant. For in- 
 stance, once when on returning from a 
 long walk she remarked: "Oh, my legs 
 are so tired!" she was solemnly informed: 
 "Young ladies never have legs, they have 
 only feet." Since nature had endowed 
 the child with exceptional beauty, and 
 absolutely exceptional intelligence, the re- 
 sult of her extraordinary training was at 
 once charming and unusual. 
 
 The consul-general hated the Latin 
 races with characteristic tenacity. This, 
 of course, makes it rather strange that he 
 should have taken an Italian wife, but 
 probably he did not consider a woman of 
 enough importance to give her nationality 
 much thought, and if he paid such atten- 
 tion to his little daughter, it was to make 
 IT 66] 
 
MOTHERANDHERDOLL 
 
 her as little a woman as possible. Still as 
 the child grew in beauty, strength and 
 intelligence, he realized that the time 
 would come when she might by marriage 
 fall into the clutches of some man of the 
 hated Latin race. This he was deter- 
 mined to prevent. 
 
 He thought long and hard, and finally 
 succeeded in solving the problem to his 
 satisfaction. He decided to marry her to 
 a man of his own race. But in those days 
 Germans were scarce in Italy, and espe- 
 cially at Leghorn; at least Germans who 
 could be considered proper suitors for the 
 daughter of the consul-general. He had 
 a friend who would have made an ideal 
 husband, save for one serious drawback. 
 He was thirty-five years older than my 
 mother. Still, a husband thirty-five years 
 older than his wife, and German, seemed 
 preferable to an Italian, even though the 
 latter were of a more suitable age. So 
 C673 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 the consul-general decided the matter in 
 his own mind, and soon persuaded his 
 friend of the desirability of such an ar- 
 rangement. 
 
 The friend was a dear man. He had 
 known my mother all her life. Indeed, 
 when she was weaned he had carried her 
 up and down in his arms all night, and 
 this because he was the one who could 
 best subdue her wailing. He had often 
 done the same for her when she cut her 
 first teeth. Moreover, ever since she was 
 a mere baby he had contributed two fine 
 dolls a year to her collection, dolls that 
 always came directly from Paris and were 
 the best any little girl could wish for. My 
 mother was exceedingly fond of dolls, a 
 feminine perversity in the face of the ef- 
 forts her father had made to give her mas- 
 culine tastes and inclinations. But the 
 fact that the friend gave her the dolls, and 
 that my mother preferred such presents 
 [68] 
 
MOTHERANDHERDOLL 
 
 to any other, had established a particu- 
 larly friendly relation between the two, 
 although it scarcely paved the way to 
 marriage. 
 
 Yet the friend was persuaded to over- 
 look all difficulties and on New Year's 
 Day, in the fifteenth year of my mother's 
 life, he sent her a formal letter in which 
 he requested her hand in marriage. It 
 was written in German, and requested the 
 high-born young lady to do him the honor 
 of conferring her hand upon him. I have 
 seen the letter, and I can testify that it 
 was a most complicated and elaborate 
 epistolary performance. 
 
 His Christmas gift had, as usual, been 
 a doll, and a particularly fine one. No 
 wonder, therefore, that my mother was 
 not prepared for an offer of marriage, all 
 the more as she was young for her age, 
 and had not the slightest tendency to let 
 her thoughts rove in this direction. When 
 
 £™1 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 the letter first came she was delighted at 
 the mere fact of receiving it, for fifty-nine 
 years ago correspondence was not quite 
 as commonplace as it has grown now, and 
 for a little girl a letter was an exceptional 
 treat. Her first delight was followed by 
 an impression of surprise and bewilder- 
 ment. She did not understand what her 
 good friend meant, nor why he wanted 
 her hand! She willingly would have 
 given him both hands any time he came, 
 and saw no reason for his writing a letter 
 about it. You must remember that Ger- 
 man was an acquired language for her, 
 and that the English maiden ladies had 
 not let her wade through volumes of 
 trashy German periodicals. At fourteen 
 she had not philosophized as to life and 
 marriage as much as I had at ten. 
 
 After having pondered over the missive, 
 she took it to my grandmother, and asked 
 for an explanation. My grandmother, 
 
 C70] 
 
MOTHERANDHERDOLL 
 
 who did not know German, but did know 
 the contents of the letter, made the matter 
 clear to her in the following way : 
 
 "Harriet," she said, "would n't you like 
 to go to Paris?" 
 
 "Yes," my mother answered promptly, 
 "but what has that got to do with the 
 letter?" 
 
 Then my grandmother, who was an 
 Italian, and in true Italian fashion over- 
 looked everything in her pride of marry- 
 ing off her daughter when she was only 
 fourteen, replied: 
 
 "The letter means that if you '11 marry 
 our good friend, he will take you to Paris." 
 
 This decided the matter. My mother 
 was delighted at the idea of going to Paris 
 with her good friend. She says that she 
 had secret visions of an unlimited number 
 of dolls. The betrothal was announced to 
 friends and relatives, and my mother 
 found herself suddenly grown up. 
 [711 
 
A T U S C A N CHILDHOOD 
 
 Consequently she had to put on long 
 dresses. The effort to masculinize her 
 
 had made her an active, restless child, and 
 she confesses herself that she was some- 
 what of a tomboy. Moreover, she was 
 very small for her age, and did not appear 
 as old as she actually was. She had no 
 desire whatsoever to grow up. and when 
 she found that giving her hand in mar- 
 riage involved wearing long skirts, she 
 wept and wailed, declaring that under 
 such conditions she would never get mar- 
 ried. 
 
 But the consul-general was a man of 
 iron. He convinced her that, once she 
 had consented, nothing on earth could ex- 
 cuse her for breaking her word. Even if 
 she did not want to get married, she would 
 have to wear long skirts anyway as a pun- 
 ishment, so that the poor child found there 
 was no escape for her: her choice now lay 
 between long skirts and a trip to Paris, or 
 
 C72] 
 
MOTHERANDHERDOLL 
 
 long skirts and staying at home in dis- 
 grace. No wonder she decided on the 
 former. 
 
 In May, only a few days before she 
 entered on her sixteenth year, the mar- 
 riage took place, and her husband imme- 
 diately fulfilled his promise of taking her 
 to Paris. 
 
 It was before the days of railroads, and 
 the journey through central Italy was 
 beautiful beyond description. Much had 
 remained unchanged when I was a child 
 myself. In the month of May the wheat- 
 fields in Tuscany are an emerald-green. 
 The mulberry trees are planted at equal 
 distances on the border of every field, and 
 from tree to tree the vines hang in regular 
 graceful festoons, never more beautiful 
 than when, as just at this period, they 
 have put on their garb of transparent 
 green young leaves. In the stretch from 
 Leghorn to Pisa the view is often free, 
 C73] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 and the eye rests on an expanse of green 
 meadows that are used for pasture, and 
 are segmented by a network of canals, 
 which in those days were the mainway of 
 traffic between Leghorn and the inland. 
 Boats, much larger, though somewhat 
 similar in shape to the Venetian gondola, 
 were drawn by men who, like beasts of 
 burden, were harnessed to ropes and 
 walked along the borders of the canals. 
 When the wind blew in the right direction 
 sails were put up to lighten their labor. 
 As the canals are narrow, and the water in 
 them cannot be seen, while the sails of the 
 boats show plainly, one got the impres- 
 sion that the ships were sailing freely on 
 the green grass. And this reminds me — 
 Alexander Dumas pere in a book of travel 
 on Italy, in all seriousness states that in 
 his day the Tuscans were still so far be- 
 hind the times that they plowed their fields 
 with sails! I do not know if the consul- 
 
 ts 
 
 » 
 
MOTHERANDHERDOLL 
 
 general ever came to know about this, but 
 it would, no doubt, have served to increase 
 his contempt for the frivolity of the Latin 
 races. 
 
 My mother, who had not often left 
 home, and to whom driving from Pisa to 
 Leghorn and watching these boats was as 
 great a delight as it later was to us, en- 
 joyed the beginning of her travels very 
 much. From the window of the carriage 
 she eagerly watched all these sights. But 
 when they reached northern Italy, and had 
 to drive for days and days over long, dusty 
 roads bordered with stately, monotonous 
 poplars, she began to be bored. She re- 
 gretted her bargain. She was sorry she 
 had ever married, even if it meant going to 
 Paris. 
 
 What her husband thought, I do not 
 
 know. He had married my mother with 
 
 the understanding that he was to save her 
 
 from the possible calamity of marrying 
 
 C753 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 into the Latin race. He fully recognized 
 the fact, as did also the consul-general, 
 that my mother was altogether too young 
 to be treated as a real married woman, but 
 he expected that time and patience would 
 make her into something that would 
 brighten and bless the last days of his life. 
 Anyway, my mother admits that he had 
 his hands full during their wedding-trip, 
 for she proved a most restless, trying, trav- 
 eling companion. I think that he must 
 have felt more like a governess than like a 
 bridegroom. 
 
 He was a sweet-tempered man, and 
 very kind to her. In fact, during this 
 whole trip he lost his temper only once, 
 and then he had some excuse for it. They 
 had been stopping over night at some small 
 inn in northern Italy. My mother, who 
 had grown to dread the long days in the 
 closed carriage, made the most of her op- 
 portunity, and rising with the sun ran into 
 C763 
 
MOTHERANDHERDOLL 
 
 the fields to catch butterflies. Later in the 
 morning the inn-keeper saw her and called 
 out to her: "Signorina, will you please tell 
 your grandfather that the post-horses will 
 be ready in a short time, and that break- 
 fast is waiting for you?" 
 
 My mother rushed to her husband in 
 perfect delight, crying: 'They have taken 
 you for my grandfather, the horses will 
 soon be ready, and breakfast is waiting 
 for us." 
 
 Then it was that the husband lost his 
 temper. 
 
 They finally reached Paris, and both 
 were equally glad of it; my mother be- 
 cause she would not have to sit still so 
 much of the day, and her husband because 
 he found some one to help him in his peda- 
 gogical duties. 
 
 In those days a newly-married woman 
 had but little more liberty than an unmar- 
 ried girl, and that means almost no liberty 
 E773 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 at all. My mother found a chaperon ready 
 for her, a Countess de Montmorency, who 
 was a dear friend of my grandmother's. 
 
 The countess was a reactionary aristo- 
 crat. What I mean by this is that she be- 
 longed to the class of French nobles who, 
 after the Revolution, spent their lives in 
 due contemplation of the privileges of 
 which the Revolution had deprived them, 
 and which the restoration of monarchy 
 had at least nominally brought back to 
 them. The countess was an acute chronic 
 case. During the Revolution her family 
 had been among the unfortunate emi- 
 grants who had known the worst poverty 
 and distress, and, still a mere child, she 
 herself had been compelled to sell petits 
 pates in the streets of London. No won- 
 der that she spent her life reacting against 
 a world that had allowed such things. 
 But what interested me most, though it 
 has no direct bearing on my story, was 
 
 178-2 
 
MOTHERANDHERDOLL 
 
 that as a child the countess had been a 
 playmate of the unfortunate Dauphin, the 
 little son of Marie Antoinette. 
 
 My mother admits that the countess 
 was sincerely interested in her, and that 
 she got her clutches on her with the inten- 
 tion of doing her much good. She taught 
 her things which even the genteel English- 
 women had not taught her. She taught 
 her that no woman who had not been con- 
 taminated by modern ideas, and had not 
 lost all self-respect, would allow pink and 
 blue ribbons on the underwear of her 
 trousseau. She taught her that even the 
 tiniest bit of a flounce was not permissible 
 on a skirt that was to be worn on the street 
 in the sight of plebeians. 
 
 My mother submitted patiently to her 
 aristocratic old friend's counsels and com- 
 mands. She regretfully told her maid to 
 take all the pink and blue ribbons out of 
 her underwear, and to rip every offending 
 C793 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 flounce from any skirt which a plebeian 
 eye might see. 
 
 The countess did not stop at this. She 
 taught my mother to bow from the waist 
 and not from the head, and to courtesy 
 three times backward without getting en- 
 tangled in her skirt. For, dear American 
 readers, do not forget that we courtesy 
 once to a person of quality, twice to a 
 princess of the blood, and three times to a 
 crowned head. My mother claims em- 
 phatically that courtesying has been the 
 hardest thing she has ever had to learn. 
 Bookkeeping, law, beating the drum, and 
 later bringing up seven children have been 
 nothing as compared to that. 
 
 The days went on. My mother was 
 learning manners and being bored. Be- 
 tween her good husband and the good 
 countess she had no fun at all. She 
 longed for her father, for her mother, for 
 her friends, and, last but not least, for the 
 drum-major. 
 
 1802 
 
MOTHER AND HER DOLL 
 
 Nor was she at all consoled by the fact 
 that her husband was showing himself 
 most munificent. He spared no money, 
 and the countess spared neither time nor 
 interest, to fit my mother out with all kinds 
 of rare and beautiful things to wear. Her 
 husband was even planning to give her a 
 whole set of Chantilly laces, which the 
 countess had promised to select with 
 every possible care. 
 
 A day was chosen on which my mother, 
 accompanied by the countess, was to 
 make a final choice of these laces. The 
 husband left the money to pay for them 
 with my mother, and the countess was 
 to call for her at the hotel and take her 
 to the shop where the laces were to be 
 bought. 
 
 On the morning of the appointed day 
 my mother was alone at the hotel. Her 
 husband had left her. The countess had 
 not yet come, sending word that she could 
 not come until considerably later than she 
 
 £81 ] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 had expected. A coupe was waiting at the 
 door — and my mother was bored to death. 
 She felt bitter and rebellious. She had 
 thought that getting married meant going 
 out alone, eating whatever she liked, and 
 doing just as she pleased. And now she 
 was kept much more strictly than she had 
 ever been kept at home. She decided to 
 show her independence as a married 
 woman, to go out alone, and to satisfy the 
 longing which had made her so anxious to 
 come to Paris, a longing which the coun- 
 tess and her husband had declared child- 
 ish, and had not gratified. The child 
 wished to go to Giroux, the world-famed 
 shop from which for years she had re- 
 ceived her Christmas toys. 
 
 It was an easy thing to get into the car- 
 riage, and order the coachman to drive to 
 Giroux. It was just as easy to get out 
 there, and to ask an affable clerk to show 
 her the finest dolls they had in stock. But 
 C823 
 
MOTHER AND HER DOLL 
 
 it was not so easy to come away without 
 buying anything. The clerk smirked, 
 bowed, explained, and persuaded ''Mad- 
 ame" — for the long dresses and the wed- 
 ding-ring which showed through her little 
 mitt, proved her right to this title — that 
 she could not possibly leave without tak- 
 ing one of the handsomest dolls. 
 
 "But I have no money with me," said 
 my mother, well aware that her husband 
 and the countess would not approve of 
 such a purchase. 
 
 "We shall send some one with Madame, 
 and Madame can pay when she gets to the 
 hotel," suggested the clerk. 
 
 So she fell. She purchased a doll that 
 could speak and walk, that had real eye- 
 lashes and finger-nails. She wanted the 
 doll, but she really would have refused if 
 the clerk had allowed it. Down in the 
 depths of her heart, however, she was 
 grateful to him because he compelled her 
 £833 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 to do what she knew she should not, but 
 dearly longed to do. 
 
 She reached the hotel only a few min- 
 utes before the clerk came to deliver the 
 new acquisition, a doll which was meant 
 to be given in homage to some little royal 
 princess, and for which Giroux charged 
 the modest sum of one thousand francs. 
 
 My mother paid without hesitancy. 
 She had the money for the laces, and she 
 did not think that a thousand francs more 
 or less would make much difference. Her 
 bookkeeping had not been of the kind to 
 teach her the value of money. The clerk 
 left, well-satisfied with the promptness of 
 the payment, and my mother remained 
 alone with her doll. It was the first time 
 since she left home that she was perfectly 
 happy. 
 
 But the countess arrived ; she was hor- 
 rified. How could a young married 
 woman who fully understood the responsi- 
 C84] 
 
MOTHER AND HER DOLL 
 
 bilities of her position and what she owed 
 to propriety, go alone to Giroux, buy a 
 doll, and play with it like a little girl of 
 three ? 
 
 Her husband also soon returned, and 
 he was not only horrified and amazed, he 
 was very angry at the waste of money, 
 and at the childishness of his bride. He 
 scolded her, and he scolded her long and 
 hard. 
 
 My mother was a very, very little girl ; 
 she had been very lonely, very homesick, 
 and she was not accustomed to have her 
 "good friend," as she still thought of him, 
 speak harshly to her. Until he married 
 her there had, of course, been no necessity 
 for discipline. But she could not reason 
 this out then as she did many, many years 
 later when she told the story to me. Her 
 heart was broken. She wept and she 
 wailed. She wanted to go home. She 
 wanted to see her father and mother. She 
 [85] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 did not want to be married. She wanted 
 to go back to her short dresses, and to her 
 dolls. 
 
 Her description was vivid, and I can 
 almost see her as she lay in a big arm- 
 chair, her arm pressed tightly over her 
 eyes, her feet stretched out straight and 
 stiff, and her whole little body shaken with 
 sobs. I can almost see the countess and 
 the husband distressed and perplexed at 
 the situation. It seemed almost impossi- 
 ble to comfort her. 
 
 Indeed, what she needed was a mother 
 to take her on her knees and wipe her 
 eyes. Neither the husband nor the coun- 
 tess thought of doing this, and the child 
 kept repeating that she wanted to go home, 
 she wanted to go to her father and mother, 
 she did not want to stay in Paris another 
 single day. 
 
 It was her husband who finally com- 
 forted her, but this only when he told her 
 C86] 
 
MOTHER AND HER DOLL 
 
 that they would leave Paris very, very 
 soon, that nobody should take the doll 
 from her, and that she might keep it with 
 her in the carriage for the rest of the 
 journey. 
 
 And so it happened that the little daugh- 
 ter of the consul-general finished her first 
 wedding-trip with a doll on the front seat 
 of the traveling carriage. 
 
 Several years later my mother was left 
 a widow. Then (and I think it served the 
 consul-general just right) she married my 
 father, a brilliant young Italian, a most 
 characteristic representative of the hated 
 Latin race. She took a long wedding-trip. 
 She came home without any doll on the 
 front seat of her carriage, but later on she 
 took another trip with her husband, and 
 this time she had no dolls, but five beauti- 
 ful, healthy children. 
 
VI 
 
 MY MOTHER AND HER LAMB 
 
VI 
 
 MY MOTHER AND HER LAMB 
 
 THERE was another story about 
 my mother which also particu- 
 larly delighted me. 
 
 My great-grandparents lived at Leg- 
 horn, and my mother was their oldest and 
 favorite grandchild. From all she has 
 told me herself I deduce that they spoiled 
 her. I never knew any of my grandmoth- 
 ers or great-grandmothers, and I have al- 
 ways regretted it deeply, because I think 
 that had they lived, there would have been 
 some one in the world to pet and spoil me. 
 But this is a digression. 
 
 My great-grandparents were wealthy, 
 though they lived in simple style. My 
 great-grandmother was an unusually eco- 
 nomical woman, for Italians are not as a 
 
 C913 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 rule model housekeepers, but she was as 
 thrifty as a New England farmer's wife. 
 
 Part of the year they spent on a large 
 estate, where my mother would remain 
 with them for months. There my mother 
 had the happiest time of her life. Her 
 grandmother excused in her what she 
 never excused in any one else, and her 
 grandfather granted her every wish, if it 
 were at all possible. Sometimes he got 
 into trouble by doing so, for my mother 
 was as fond of animals as she was of dolls, 
 and pets introduce into a household an 
 element of disorder of which my great- 
 grandmother sincerely disapproved. But 
 though she would reproach my great- 
 grandfather for having allowed some stray 
 cat or dog to be brought home, still she 
 did not deprive her little granddaughter 
 of the newly acquired treasure. 
 
 Once her grandfather took my mother 
 with him on a visit to one of the peasant 
 C92] 
 
MY MOTHER AND HER LAMB 
 
 houses that belonged to him. The shep- 
 herds had just come down from the moun- 
 tains with large flocks of sheep, and the 
 natural result of this was that my mother 
 asked for a little lamb. 
 
 "Oh, Harriet," said her grandfather, 
 "what will your grandma say? You '11 
 want to have the lamb in the house, and 
 you know that she will scold. Beside, the 
 lamb will soon grow big, and then what 
 will you do?" 
 
 The child evaded the question. She 
 knew she would gain her point if she only 
 kept on coaxing. 
 
 "Please, grandpapa, let me have the 
 lamb! Please, grandpapa, let me have 
 the lamb! Please, grandpapa, let me 
 have the lamb!" 
 
 Her good grandfather gave in at last, 
 and they drove home with the little lamb 
 nestling in my mother's lap. 
 
 But as they neared the villa her grand- 
 
 [93] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 father began to have qualms of conscience. 
 He was afraid of what might be said when 
 they reached the house with a new pet, 
 after it had been distinctly understood 
 that such a thing would never happen 
 again. He tried to gain time, and per- 
 suaded my mother not to take the lamb 
 in at once, but to let him take it down to 
 the vault, where he was to deposit some 
 money several peasants had paid in. 
 
 My great-grandfather's villa was very 
 old; in fact, it came very near being a 
 castle. There were subterranean passages 
 and vaults, and in one of these my great- 
 grandfather had a safe in which he used 
 to keep the money paid by the tena-nts. 
 Sometimes considerable sums were locked 
 away there. 
 
 You cannot, of course, have an old 
 house with vaults and subterranean pas- 
 sages without having a ghost, and, in 
 fact, a well-developed ghost was said to 
 
 CM] 
 
MY MOTHER AND HER LAMB 
 
 inhabit these premises. The story con- 
 nected with it was duly harrowing. They 
 said that many years ago a woman and 
 her baby had been buried alive there, and 
 that on certain nights the moaning of the 
 mother and the wailing of the child could 
 be distinctly heard. Of course the family 
 did not believe in the ghost, but the peas- 
 ants did. 
 
 My mother and her grandfather arrived 
 at the villa at night, and, with the excuse 
 of taking down the money, they took the 
 little lamb to one of the vaults, waiting till 
 morning to introduce it to my great-grand- 
 mother, and hoping that by that time some 
 way might be found to mitigate her wrath. 
 My mother took down a soft piece of cloth, 
 and a saucer with bread and milk. She 
 fed the lamb as best she could with a 
 spoon, then covered it up carefully, and 
 reluctantly left it for the night. 
 
 It was well known that my great-grand- 
 C95] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 father kept money in the vaults, and the 
 sums which he was said to keep there 
 were grossly exaggerated. This served 
 to tempt some unfortunate peasants who, 
 no doubt, tired of their poverty, made up 
 their minds to break into the vaults and 
 to rob the safe. 
 
 In the middle of the night they came 
 stealthily to the villa and, thanks to a care- 
 fully elaborated plan, actually succeeded 
 in reaching the place where the safe was 
 kept. 
 
 But they had hardly begun to break 
 open the door when they dropped their 
 tools and ran away, for they distinctly 
 heard the moaning of the mother and the 
 wailing of the child, whose spirits they 
 knew haunted the spot. 
 
 After a little while their courage re- 
 turned and they went back. As their 
 steps neared the door the wailing of the 
 child was heard again. Again they fled; 
 
 [963 
 
MY MOTHER AND HER LAMB 
 
 yet even this time the braver ones thought 
 it mere nonsense, and declared that noth- 
 ing should keep them from breaking into 
 the vault and getting the money. 
 
 But when they tried it the third time, 
 and again began working on the door, the 
 weird wailing was heard again, so dis- 
 tinctly that the men dropped their tools in 
 distress and fled. 
 
 Next morning, when my great-grand- 
 father, still much puzzled as to how he 
 was going to break the news to his wife, 
 came to get the lamb, he found not only 
 the tools of the robbers, but a jacket which 
 one of them had dropped in his fright. 
 It served to identify the criminals, who 
 were not professionals, but poor mis- 
 guided peasants living on the estate. 
 They confessed at once, saying that the 
 ghost had warned them to give up their 
 undertaking, and they described minutely 
 how they had been able to distinguish be- 
 C973 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 tween the moaning of the mother and the 
 wailing of the child. 
 
 Now my great-grandfather was a very- 
 astute man. He never told that they had 
 heard only the poor little lamb bleating 
 when it heard their footsteps, yearning, 
 perhaps, for the shepherd who would put 
 it back into the fold. The well-established 
 fact that the ghost had been heard (and 
 after awhile, of course, it was said that it 
 was actually seen by the men who at- 
 tempted to break in) proved a powerful 
 safeguard. It also made it easier for my 
 great-grandfather to tell his wife how the 
 lamb had saved them from being robbed. 
 
 My great-grandmother, who was very 
 thrifty — in fact, so thrifty that some peo- 
 ple considered her altogether too fond of 
 money — never uttered a word of reproach. 
 The lamb grew into a sheep, and still was 
 allowed to walk around the villa undis- 
 turbed. 
 
 [983 
 
MY MOTHER AND HER LAMB 
 
 Another popular story, which • my 
 mother told us often, yet not often enough 
 to satisfy us, was the story of "The Saint." 
 
 Any one driving from Pisa to Lucca 
 may see, even to-day, a number of crosses 
 along the roads. They are decorated with 
 the ladder, the lance, the cock, and so 
 forth. Some of them were erected by the 
 Saint who plays the main part in my tale; 
 but no guide-book will tell you about him. 
 
 It was some time in the forties that a 
 man with a large following made his ap- 
 pearance in Tuscany. He wandered from 
 place to place, fasting, praying, and plant- 
 ing crosses in honor of the Lord. The 
 people considered him a saint, and fol- 
 lowed him in hopes of miracles, though no 
 miracles are recorded. His fasting was 
 extreme, for he was said to live on noth- 
 ing but bread and water. And, moreover, 
 he submitted himself to one self-inflicted 
 discipline, praised by the Roman Cath- 
 
 C99] LOFC. 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 olic Church, which my early English 
 training makes me look upon with par- 
 ticular aversion: he never was known to 
 wash. Why this neglect of personal 
 cleanliness, in such opposition to the Eng- 
 lish law: "Cleanliness is next to Godli- 
 ness," has grown in the Catholic Church, 
 my historical studies have since ex- 
 plained. But a discussion would be out 
 of place here. An historical item which, 
 however, is interesting, and which does 
 belong here by right, is, that this man 
 was said to have been one of the Terrorists 
 who actively participated in the execution 
 of Louis XVI. Remorse, they said, had 
 pursued him ever since, and had finally 
 made a saint of him. 
 
 This "Saint," called "San Gennaro" 
 (do not confuse him with the famous San 
 Gennaro of Naples), finally reached my 
 great-grandfather's estate. The enthu- 
 siasm of the people had grown extreme. 
 
MY MOTHER AND HER LAMB 
 
 As he went from village to village he was 
 received by the clergy, and the crosses 
 were planted with ever-increasing cere- 
 monies. 
 
 My great-grandfather was a religious 
 man, though by no means bigoted ; but his 
 wife was extreme in her religion. The 
 reception planned for the wandering Saint 
 was, therefore, a very elaborate one. 
 Even a bishop from one of the neighbor- 
 ing cities was invited to attend, and the 
 country people gathered from far and 
 near. There was to be a procession, fol- 
 lowed by a banquet, planned with all the 
 elaborateness which even now is a neces- 
 sary tribute to men of the church. 
 
 My mother says that she was disgusted 
 with the filthiness of the Saint's appear- 
 ance, and that she did not see how any 
 one could bear to sit next to him at table. 
 She watched him with eager curiosity. 
 While all the other men of God enjoyed 
 
 [101] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 the good food the Lord had provided for 
 them, San Gennaro abstained from eat- 
 ing and drinking. 
 
 He asked for a cup of clear water and 
 a crust of dry bread that he might eat 
 alone in the dining-room when the others 
 had finished their meal. His modest de- 
 mand was granted, and though only clear 
 water and dry bread was provided for 
 him, my great-grandmother saw to it that 
 the service used for the Saint should be of 
 solid silver. Then every one withdrew, 
 and he was left alone to pray, for so 
 saintly was he, that with him it was not 
 only fasting and constant praying, but 
 eating and constant praying also. 
 
 Nor did he spend much time on his 
 crust of bread. In a few minutes he came 
 out of the dining-room, and asked to be 
 taken to the chapel, where he wished to 
 spend an hour in prayer. He was defer- 
 entially taken there by my great-grand- 
 C102] 
 
MY MOTHER AND HER LAMB 
 
 father, and left to an uninterrupted com- 
 munion with God, for San Gennaro's re- 
 quest that he should not, under any con- 
 sideration, be disturbed, had been earnest 
 and emphatic. 
 
 I have stated already that my great- 
 grandmother was not only thrifty, but just 
 a wee bit more than thrifty, and when the 
 banquet was over, and her guests disposed 
 of in the parlors and the gardens, she 
 made her way back to the dining-room to 
 see that such provisions as had been left 
 over should be conserved for future needs. 
 
 In Italian families what remains of the 
 meats is generally placed on the sideboard, 
 and only cleared away after the guests 
 have left the room. My thrifty great- 
 grandmother did not allow this clearing 
 away till she herself had mentally inven- 
 toried what had been left. Her keen eye 
 noticed, too, how much had actually been 
 consumed. It was, therefore, with great 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 indignation she found that a whole chicken 
 was missing. She did trust the butler, 
 who had been with them for years and 
 years, and she and the man himself were 
 equally disturbed and troubled at the dis- 
 appearance of more than half a chicken. 
 
 Now my mother had a trick of giving 
 things away — sometimes it would be fruit, 
 sometimes part of a dessert — and the 
 natural conclusion was, that she had 
 grabbed the chicken and distributed it 
 among some of the peasant children. 
 But when the butler called her, and my 
 great-grandmother questioned her, she 
 absolutely denied having done it. 
 
 "Harriet," insisted my great-grand- 
 mother, "you know you 're always doing 
 that kind of thing. Who could have taken 
 it now?" 
 
 My mother replied promptly: "The 
 Saint." 
 
 C1043 
 
MY MOTHER AND HER LAMB 
 
 "What!" said my great-grandmother, 
 raising her hands in horror. "Accuse a 
 holy man of stealing chicken!" 
 
 "Well," said my mother, "you did n't 
 take it" ; pointing to the butler, "he did n't 
 take it; I know I did n't take it, and the 
 Saint has been in here alone. I don't like 
 him, anyway: he 's too dirty." 
 
 My great-grandmother, as I have said, 
 was extremely religious, and though she 
 had her favorite grandchild before her, 
 her ire was aroused. She told the child 
 that if she had no more discretion, and no 
 more respect for holy people, she might 
 just as well stay by herself, and as a pun- 
 ishment, she should not be allowed to 
 come into the parlors, or into the garden, 
 till all the guests had left. 
 
 My mother said that she thought it very 
 unjust, and she went up-stairs to her room 
 in tears. She wandered around the house 
 C1053 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 for awhile, and then, bored, as a child 
 naturally would be, she tried to find some- 
 thing to do. 
 
 Finally, she thought that she could 
 amuse herself by watching the Saint at 
 prayer, for there was a small corridor 
 which connected the chapel with the villa, 
 and which had a small window from which 
 she could see all that happened in the 
 chapel itself. So she crept slowly along, 
 and putting her fair little head out of the 
 opening, can you imagine what she saw? 
 
 She saw the Saint, not praying, but 
 comfortably seated on the altar steps eat- 
 ing the chicken with his hands ! 
 
 My mother says that she almost yelled 
 with delight. She rushed down to her 
 grandmother, and whispered excitedly 
 into her ear: 
 
 "Grandmama, I know who took the 
 chicken!" 
 
 "Sh!" said my great-grandmother, who 
 
 [106^ 
 
MY MOTHER AND HER LAMB 
 
 felt rather sensitive about her reputation 
 of being extremely economical. Still, her 
 curiosity was such, that she immediately 
 took her grandchild into another room, 
 and asked for an explanation. Then my 
 mother triumphantly exclaimed : 
 
 "Come and see for yourself, grand- 
 mama. Come and see how well your holy 
 man prays." 
 
 My great-grandmother went quietly up 
 through the little corridor, and looked out 
 through the little window. Then she 
 spoke to my great-grandfather, who, after 
 having looked into the chapel, invited the 
 bishop to do likewise. They all under- 
 stood only too well why San Gennaro had 
 insisted that nobody should enter the 
 chapel while he was holding his commu- 
 nion with God. 
 
 My mother was given a basket of candy 
 and fruit to distribute just as she liked 
 among the peasant children. There was 
 
 C1073 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 one condition attached to this gift, and 
 that was that she should not tell what she 
 knew about the Saint. 
 
 The Saint mysteriously disappeared. 
 The peasants thought that he had gone 
 away on some holy mission, but the fact 
 is, that the bishop got him quietly out of 
 the way, for fear that if the truth con- 
 cerning him were fully known, he might 
 be stoned. 
 
 The crosses were left standing, and no 
 doubt serve their purpose for whoever 
 prays before them with a simple, earnest 
 heart. 
 
 Other stories that my mother would oc- 
 casionally tell us were quite as thrilling as 
 the one about the Saint. Particularly in- 
 teresting to us were those of her travels 
 through Italy at the time of the brigands. 
 Can you imagine anything more exciting 
 than arriving at some lonely little inn at 
 night, knowing that the place was not safe, 
 C1083 
 
MY MOTHER AND HER LAMB 
 
 because perhaps some rich foreigner had 
 recently been murdered there; having to 
 barricade your room so that if any one 
 tried to rob you, you had a chance to pre- 
 pare for self-defense ; or losing your way 
 as you were trying to find the host so as to 
 give him some orders, and getting into 
 dangerous, forbidden quarters, where 
 through a hole in the floor you could peep 
 into mysterious subterranean vaults and 
 see a post-chaise you recognized as that 
 of some traveler who had recently been 
 known to disappear? These must have 
 been thrilling journeys, indeed, and com- 
 pared to them, modern travels seem very 
 tame. 
 
 [109;] 
 
VII 
 
 ON DISCIPLINE AND ITS RESULTS 
 
VII 
 
 ON DISCIPLINE AND ITS RESULTS 
 
 MY great-aunt used to tell me 
 that as a child my mother was 
 spoiled, and I believe this. If 
 she had been brought up very strictly, she 
 would never have brought up her children 
 so strictly herself. Taking long walks, 
 learning languages, bookkeeping, law, 
 even beating the drum, do not constitute 
 real hardships. 
 
 I have a theory of my own on the sub- 
 ject: which is that many things in life are 
 the result of some reaction, and that in 
 their children most people react against 
 what they have suffered themselves. 
 Now, I wish it distinctly understood that 
 my mother really educated us. Nowadays 
 few children are really educated. They 
 
 CH3] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 are generally only allowed to grow up, and 
 that is something altogether different. 
 
 In a good many ways her pedagogical 
 theories have been attended with success, 
 and when we try to prove to her now 
 where mistakes have been made, she legit- 
 imately shrugs her shoulders and says — 
 "Look at the result." The result satisfies 
 her, and no further discussion is possible. 
 
 Whipping constituted the main punish- 
 ment, and sometimes the chastisement 
 could better be called a flogging rather 
 than a whipping. If we were naughty with 
 the nurses, we were whipped. If we did 
 not learn our lessons, we were whipped. 
 But if perchance, and this happened very 
 seldom, we handled the truth somewhat 
 recklessly, we were flogged. We also were 
 flogged if we in any way struck or other- 
 wise abused an inferior. In the last two 
 cases I think myself that the rod is justly 
 used. Otherwise I sincerely disapprove 
 [114] 
 
DISCIPLINE AND RESULTS 
 
 of it. My childhood views on the subject 
 are curiously enough preserved, and will 
 find their place in the next chapter, be- 
 cause they are, I think, of real pedagogical 
 interest, as it is very rare that children 
 write down their impressions and their 
 point of view. 
 
 Yet my mother occasionally invented 
 punishments, and these were far more effi- 
 cacious, and made a far more lasting im- 
 pression than all the whippings in the 
 world. I never was privileged to have 
 any punishment worthy of being put on 
 record. My oldest brother suffered in two 
 famous instances which the family never 
 forgot. 
 
 He was a precocious infant; there is no 
 doubt of that. He read Shakspere's 
 "Julius Caesar" with fluency, intelligence, 
 and pleasure at seven. He recited selec- 
 tions from it. (And when my mother, as 
 he was once showing off, remarked that he 
 
 [115] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 shuffled his feet during his recital, and re- 
 quested the governess to break this habit, 
 she received the indignant reply : ' 'Madam, 
 you cannot expect me to attend to his 
 head and to his feet at the same time.") 
 At nine he did well in Latin and Greek. 
 At twelve he had composed comparative 
 chronological tables of the history of the 
 world. When, long before he was ready 
 for it in years he was sent for awhile to 
 the public Ginnasio, he organized an army 
 of boys, of which he, the youngest, elected 
 himself the general. But when I have 
 said that he was very precocious, I sum 
 up the situation. 
 
 He was not, however, without faults, 
 and, as a small boy, one of his great faults 
 was whining. In vain my mother rea- 
 soned with him, telling him that he had 
 to be a man, that whining was not even 
 allowed in little girls, much less in a big 
 boy who already wore trousers. It did no 
 
 Ci 163 
 
DISCIPLINE AND RESULTS 
 
 good. If anything went wrong, Matthew 
 would whine. 
 
 My mother threatened: "If you don't 
 stop whining, I '11 treat you like a girl." 
 
 But Matthew continued to whine. If 
 Totty or Alick displeased him, he would 
 whine. If his lessons were too long, he 
 would whine. If his clothes did not suit 
 him, he would whine. 
 
 My mother finally lost patience. One 
 day she took him to the nursery, told 
 the nurse to bring her one of my oldest 
 sister's frocks, and, without giving Mat- 
 thew the slightest chance to object, made 
 him dress up like a girl from head to foot. 
 Not one piece of dainty underwear was 
 spared. Even his shoes had to be girls' 
 shoes. 
 
 His whining subsided to absolute 
 silence. He was not compelled to go back 
 to the school-room, and deeply humil- 
 iated, he withdrew into the recess of a 
 CH7] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 nursery window. As he was standing 
 there, his back carefully turned to any one 
 who might perchance come in — anxious, 
 if he had dared, to disappear from view 
 altogether — a mild little old woman, our 
 family seamstress, chanced into the room. 
 
 She did not know what had happened. 
 Seeing the familiar red plaid of my sister's 
 dress, she gently walked up to the dress, 
 and caressing one sleeve lightly, said: 
 "Miss Totty, are you ill? Are you not 
 taking any lessons to-day?" 
 
 The answer was an angry yell. My 
 brother thought it had been a deliberate 
 insult. He rushed past the astonished 
 woman, fled into the garden, and hid 
 among the trees. 
 
 That broke him of whining. He never 
 had to wear girls' clothes again. 
 
 Another punishment remained more 
 famous still. This I witnessed, awe- 
 stricken, myself. 
 
 DISH 
 
DISCIPLINE AND RESULTS 
 
 A precocious infant has an active mind; 
 an active mind involves thinking in every 
 direction, and, for a child, thinking in 
 every direction involves mischief, and 
 mischief of a most unexpected kind. 
 One of the most strictly enforced rules 
 of our childhood was that we should have 
 nothing to do with any of the servants ex- 
 cept the nurses. Imagine, therefore, 
 what a horrible thing it was when my 
 brother (even if he did not know what led 
 him to do it) actually went into the maids' 
 bedroom, and hid under one of the beds. 
 When the maids were dressing he leaped 
 out with a yell, and they were frightened 
 to death. 
 
 When this was reported to my mother 
 she was at a loss for a punishment. She 
 must have known that we had grown hard- 
 ened to whippings, and even a flogging 
 did not seem enough for a misdemeanor 
 like this. Then a brilliant idea came to 
 [119] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 her. She found something that the family 
 would never forget. 
 
 She called my brother to her, and said : 
 "I have always treated you like a boy and 
 a gentleman, because I thought that was 
 what you preferred, but if you prefer to 
 live like a dog, why, by all means, we will 
 let you live like a dog. You must admit 
 that only a dog would crawl under a bed 
 and bark the way you did. But if you 
 want to be a dog, you must be one con- 
 sistently whenever it is possible, and I 
 shall see to it that every opportunity is 
 given you." 
 
 We were in the country then, and not 
 only "the children," but even I, ate with 
 my father and mother — at the table, of 
 course. But this day, when we came into 
 the dining-room, only three children's 
 places were set. Matthew's place was set 
 on the floor. My mother was inexorable. 
 The butler placed his plate on the floor 
 
DISCIPLINE AND RESULTS 
 
 before him, and every little while he would 
 be cheered by my mother's remark: "I 
 hope you enjoy living like a dog." 
 
 This was done for three days. After 
 that he was allowed to resume a normal 
 life, but I know that he never hid under a 
 bed again. 
 
 Ritchie used to lose his temper, and 
 when his temper was lost he would not 
 reason. My mother impressed the unde- 
 sirability of lack of reasoning on him in 
 the following way : — 
 
 She said: "If you want to say things 
 that have no sense, all right, but first I 
 want to see if I cannot cure you by an 
 indigestion of senseless talk. You must 
 go into the garden, stand straight under 
 one of the big trees, and for one whole 
 hour move your arms up and down, say- 
 ing: 'Wooden shoes up, wooden shoes 
 down — Wooden shoes up, wooden shoes 
 down — Wooden shoes up, wooden shoes 
 
 [121] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 down.' If this does not suit you, you can 
 come to me and tell me you do not like to 
 say things that have no sense." 
 
 I must add that it did help Ritchie to 
 control his temper, but he held out for an 
 hour saying — "Wooden shoes up, wooden 
 shoes down" — without giving in. 
 
 When he was very, very little, not more 
 than five, Ritchie got into the habit of 
 saying — "If you won't let me do so and 
 so, I '11 kill myself." 
 
 My mother spoke to him very gravely, 
 and said: "You have no right to kill your- 
 self, because, till you are twenty-one, you 
 are not your own master." 
 
 Then Ritchie, with a peculiarly German 
 exactness and conscientiousness, would 
 say: "If you won't let me do so and 
 so, when I 'm twenty-one I '11 kill my- 
 self." 
 
 Baby one day unexpectedly broke in 
 with the remark: "Why, if you kill your- 
 C122] 
 
DISCIPLINE AND RESULTS 
 
 self when you are twenty-one, you are a 
 thief." 
 
 "Why am I a thief?" Ritchie asked in- 
 dignantly. 
 
 Then Baby with calm superiority ex- 
 plained: "Because you '11 steal a soldier 
 from the King." 
 
 Baby, too, was precocious. He died 
 when he was hardly four years old, and 
 yet we all remember him as having a dis- 
 tinct personality. 
 
 My mother and the governesses did not 
 understand Ritchie at all. He was a pas- 
 sionate, yet extremely affectionate child, 
 who needed tender care. No doubt, many 
 times the governess was to blame when 
 Ritchie got into a passion. As he grew 
 older he did not say — "When I 'm twenty- 
 one I '11 kill myself," but "I am going to 
 run away." 
 
 My mother then would say: "All right, 
 run away; but your clothes are mine. 
 C123] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 You came into your home naked, and 
 naked you shall leave it." 
 
 Then Ritchie would plead: "One little 
 old pair of trousers!" 
 
 "No," my mother would say, "it is not 
 good for you to run away. I cannot let 
 you have even one little old pair of trous- 
 ers for such a purpose. You can have all 
 the clothes you want, if you stay here." 
 
 And Ritchie would plead: "One little 
 old pair of trousers!" 
 
 Though I was very little then myself, I 
 saw nothing funny in this. The recollec- 
 tion of those scenes hurts me to this day. 
 I myself should never have argued about a 
 pair of trousers, if I had intended to run 
 away. I knew that running away was 
 wrong, and that running away with a pair 
 of trousers, even if they did not belong to 
 me, did not make it much worse. I should 
 never have argued the way he did. I used 
 to feel like telling him so, but I never did, 
 
 [124IJ 
 
DISCIPLINE AND RESULTS 
 
 because I loved him very dearly, I hated to 
 see him cry, and I did n't want him to run 
 away. 
 
 It was Ritchie, however, who finally 
 best illustrated the glorious results of my 
 mother's discipline. His chief fault was 
 that he would interrupt any one whenever 
 he had something to say. My mother re- 
 peatedly told him: ''Ritchie, you must 
 never interrupt me when I am talking. 
 Wait till I have finished, and then say: 
 'At your convenience, mama, I have some- 
 thing to tell you.' Take time; learn to be 
 polite!" 
 
 One day toward the end of the season 
 my mother had taken Ritchie and me to 
 The Baths at Leghorn. The Baths are 
 built in piers and rotundas into the sea (we 
 have no tide at Leghorn) , and these piers 
 are connected by bridges. Before the au- 
 tumn storms begin the boards are taken 
 away, so that only two long wooden beams 
 
 P25] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 and the railings remain. There was abso- 
 lutely no danger in walking across these 
 bridges on the beams, as we could have all 
 necessary support from the railings, and 
 it was great fun for us to do so. 
 
 Now, I had crossed one of these bridges 
 quite a distance from where my mother 
 and some friends were sitting in a group. 
 I had walked around the rotunda, and had 
 stood some time watching a man as he 
 fished. But finally I grew tired of watch- 
 ing, and just as I had left him, and was 
 about to cross the bridge on the beam, he 
 called to me, because he had caught a fish. 
 I waited till the fish was safely landed, 
 and then started to cross the bridge. But 
 so interested was I in the man's success, 
 that I forgot that the boards had been 
 taken away, and walking on as usual, fell 
 into the sea with a splash. 
 
 Ritchie, who was standing by me, in- 
 stead of taking the slightest concern as to 
 
 C1263 
 
DISCIPLINE AND RESULTS 
 
 what would happen to me, rapidly crossed 
 the bridge, and ran to my mother. Taking 
 off his cap, the little fellow stood politely 
 beside her for some time, waiting till she 
 had finished a rather long story she was 
 just telling. Then he said: 
 
 "Mama, at your convenience, I have 
 something to tell you." 
 
 "What is it?" said my mother approv- 
 ingly, for she appreciated that he had 
 finally learned to be so polite. 
 
 "Mama, at your convenience, Lisi has 
 fallen into the water." 
 
 "What!" said my mother, jumping up. 
 "Has any one pulled her out?" 
 
 Then Ritchie calmly and politely said: 
 "I don't know, but I did not interrupt 
 your story — and she can swim!" 
 
 C1273 
 
VIII 
 
 A child's point of view 
 
VIII 
 
 A child's point of view 
 
 OFF and on when I was a child 
 I kept a diary. Or perhaps I 
 should not say that I kept a 
 diary, but rather that occasionally I would 
 set down in writing my reflections on peo- 
 ple and things. A few sheets have been 
 preserved. I had no elaborate books to 
 write in, but sheets of foolscap paper that 
 I had sewed together myself. No eyes 
 but mine saw these writings. Even my 
 brothers did not know of their existence. 
 The language in which these diaries were 
 kept varied. At certain periods I was 
 fond of writing French, at other times I 
 wrote English or Italian, and very seldom, 
 though it was the language that I was 
 most familiar with in writing, did I write 
 
 [131j 
 
.4 TUSCAN CHILDH D 
 
 German. English, as I have explained, 
 was my first language. Italian was my 
 native tongue, German was the language 
 of the school-room, and French, I can say, 
 I taught myself out of a spirit of contra- 
 diction. 
 
 I think that the Franco-German war has 
 not yet been forgotten, and that the dis- 
 like of the Germans for the French is still 
 strong. It was very strong in our school- 
 room, and. indeed, unreasonable. We 
 had to learn French, because it scarcely 
 could be omitted from our education, but 
 it was a sorely neglected subject, and no- 
 body cared whether we made progress in 
 it or not. The result was that we grew 
 to love to read, to write, and to speak 
 French. My diaries show no careful train- 
 ing. My agreement of words is some- 
 thing wonderful and fearful, but I wrote 
 along fluently, feeling that my govern- 
 esses, had they known I wrote, would 
 [132] 
 
A CHILD'S POINT OF VIEW 
 
 have preferred me to write in some other 
 tongue. I have never understood why a 
 special rule was made in my behalf which 
 forbade me to read the Bible in French. 
 Since I only read it in time of recreation, 
 and did not let it encroach upon my 
 studies, I do not see how it could possibly 
 be considered a misdemeanor because I 
 happened to want to read the Word of 
 God in French. But I was forbidden to 
 do so. 
 
 This may explain why certain pages of 
 my diaries that are particularly rebellious 
 are all in French. One little essay, writ- 
 ten when I was not yet thirteen, bears the 
 title, Apropos de battre les enfant (sic). 
 As this title tells us, I aired my views upon 
 corporal punishment for children. I shall 
 give it in an almost literal translation, 
 preserving the punctuation, which is 
 curious. The comments in parentheses 
 are added to the translation now. 
 [13311 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 CONCERNING THE BEATING OF CHILDREN 
 
 Last night we spoke of the Prince of Naples. 
 My mother says that when he is naughty he 
 should be whipped. I do not see how she can even 
 have this idea. She said he was no more than an- 
 other child. Comment done! Has my mother's 
 royalism taken flight? It is true that he is just like 
 any other child. He has two legs two arms a nose 
 etc. etc. But will you make no difference between 
 the child who should be brought up to command all 
 the other children and all the other children who 
 ought all to be brought up to obey him. And then 
 strike the future King! Great God! I only ask if 
 it is possible! The person of the King is sacred! 
 It is absolutely impossible to strike the heir of the 
 throne. Papa does not think as Mama does. But 
 now about children in general. I do not think that 
 boxing the ears at the right time can do any harm. 
 But corporal punishment should be used with dis- 
 cretion if not one gets used to it. There was a 
 time when Mama whipped us for the least thing for 
 the least little quarrel between us. After having 
 been whipped in such a way that we kept the marks 
 for many many days we began to quarrel harder 
 than ever to decide who had cried least, and our joy 
 knew no bounds if sometimes we had taken a 
 whipping without wincing. And if we were threat- 
 ened with a whipping we simply thought. Je ne 
 
 C1343 
 
A CHILD'S POINT OF VIEW 
 
 m'en mocque pas mal. [The equivalent of this in 
 English would be "I do not care a snap of my fin- 
 gers," though the French term is spicier.] Only 
 then I did not say this in French for I did not 
 speak French as much as I do now but the result 
 is the same. But another point, is it permissible 
 for a mother to strike her children in public? 
 
 I think not. 
 
 Twice my mother has struck me in public And 
 ... I have not forgotten it yet. Once it was 
 before more than twenty persons of our acquaint- 
 ance ! ! And do you want to know why. I was with 
 a friend Blanch. My friend was speaking. My 
 mother told us not to speak so loud. Blanch low- 
 ers her voice, after about a quarter of an hour she 
 had forgotten my mother's request and spoke just 
 as loud as before. What does Mama do. She calls 
 me to her and boxes my ears repeatedly saying 
 "Ich werde dir lehren mir nicht zu gehorchen." "I 
 shall teach you not to obey me." [This translation 
 of the German sentence is in the original.] I did 
 not expect them (the boxes on the ears) and I felt 
 the blood mount to my face, and I leaned against a 
 chair. It was so sudden but I controlled myself 
 and I simply said Thank you Mama! — and I went 
 back to my place. And my mother who turns to 
 the lady sitting next to her saying "You see how I 
 treat my children when they do not obey me." 
 Everybody when they saw my ears boxed you 
 
 [135] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 might say without any cause had exchanged 
 glances. However since I had not rebelled but on 
 the contrary I had taken everything so calmly the 
 beau role remained to me and later when my 
 mother was not there they tried to comfort me but 
 I refused their pity through pride and perhaps 
 through vanity. My father was traveling in France 
 then or perhaps I might have complained to him. 
 But I have not yet either forgotten or forgiven. 
 Another time it was on the street coming home 
 from The Baths. This time hardly any one saw it. 
 Now this action has so much humiliated me being 
 struck before so many people it was terrible for 
 me. I think that for four or five days I hated my 
 mother. That is why I think that to strike in public 
 may have bad consequences 1. This time I had 
 done no wrong and my mother committed an in- 
 justice. 2. She awakened in me a thousand rebel- 
 lious thoughts etc. etc. 
 
 If I have not spoken of this to my father it is 
 because I did not wish him to have more cares than 
 he already has and I was sure that he would not 
 have approved Mama. Besides I hope that when I 
 have children of my own, if I ever have any, I 
 will behave better. 
 
 If all children wrote unreservedly their 
 impressions about the punishments re- 
 
A CHILD'S POINT OF VIEW 
 
 ceived, it would no doubt be a great aid to 
 pedagogy. The extract quoted above is 
 not remarkable for style, or a mastery of 
 the language, though it is written fluently 
 in a foreign tongue, but it surely is re- 
 markable as a calm exposition of the im- 
 pressions received on being justly or un- 
 justly punished. There is no doubt in my 
 mind that most children get hardened to 
 corporal punishment, and that it is effec- 
 tive only when it is used as an exception 
 and not as a rule. 
 
 About the same time I wrote another 
 little essay, also in French, which bore the 
 title: Moi et Louis XVII. 
 
 I AND LOUIS XVII 
 
 My brothers made fun of me because I love this 
 unhappy little King so much. But I openly admit 
 that I love him, that I admire him, that I adore 
 him ! And you will see if I am not right ! Once I 
 was ten or eleven years old. I had the whooping- 
 cough. I had no governess. I was allowed to re- 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 main at home with the permission of going on 
 The Baths where I did not find the most suitable 
 company, or remaining at home where the com- 
 pany I found was only novels — besides I had al- 
 ready read altogether too much. You can imagine 
 what I should have become ! Either I should have 
 acquired the manners of a fisherman or I should 
 have lost my head over novels. Once I remem- 
 bered in reading the "Chevalier de Maison-Rouge" 
 of Dumas that there was in Mama's library a book 
 called "Louis XVII." I took it and I began to 
 read. Against my habit I read slowly. I thought over 
 almost every sentence I read. The charm of the 
 little Prince struck me in the first volume. His 
 courage, his martyrdom in the second. I put aside 
 the novels and I took this book. All my thoughts 
 centered on this one point. At night I dreamed 
 about him. During the day I wrote poems to him. 
 You laugh don't you? Perhaps you are right. 
 Even on my religion the child-king has had a great 
 influence. To see how this child in spite of bad 
 treatment and all efforts to corrupt him always re- 
 mained a good Christian and a good son made 
 much more impression on me than the ancient and 
 the new Testament. Simon asked him Capet what 
 would you do if the Vendeans delivered you and 
 he answers always remembering the last recom- 
 mendations of his fathers / should forgive you. 
 [This last sentence is underscored twice for em- 
 
 C1383 
 
A CHILD'S POINT OF VIEW 
 
 phasis.] After having been slowly tortured and 
 seeing himself drawn step by step to the tomb he 
 still forgives ! Another time his torturer wanted to 
 oblige him to cry The Republic is eternal! But 
 Louis XVII refuses with royal pride. They strike 
 him, he cries out: don't you know that there is 
 nothing eternal and at night Simon finds him weep- 
 ing bitterly. Simon stops, the savage Republican 
 cannot help being moved. The child goes up to 
 his jailor and says sobbing: Forgive me. I was 
 mistaken this morning when I said that there was 
 nothing eternal, God is eternal but there is none 
 but He who is so! Could anyone be more Chris- 
 tian than he was? My object in religion was to be 
 as good a Christian as he. What I admired still 
 more was his filial love, and his gratitude. When 
 after much suffering he had a jailor who was a 
 little less cruel what did he ask for ! His mother. 
 Dr. Naudin protected him against bad treatment 
 he wished to thank him. He had nothing to give 
 him, he kept a pear from his supper, what a poor 
 gift for the King of France. The child gave this 
 pear to the Doctor the old man found no words to 
 thank him but a tear fell on the hand of the little 
 Prince. And what are words compared to a 
 tear. . . . Even on my instruction the child- 
 king had his influence by continually composing 
 poems and by writing I have progressed in my 
 French and the desire to know more has awakened 
 
 C139II 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 within me. I have asked Mama to give me French 
 lessons. Mama has consented. Judge now if I 
 am not right to love him. I hope that for my birth- 
 day Mama will give me this book and I shall be 
 as careful of it as I know how. 
 
 He has awakened all my royalist sentiments 
 therefore long live Louis XVII who makes me cry 
 long live the King, the Queen and the Prince of 
 Naples. I wish that everyone might have a Louis 
 XVII for certainly many people would be happier 
 than they are now. 
 
 This requires an explanation. I have 
 mentioned that when I was nine or ten 
 years old one governess let me swallow 
 German novels wholesale. Curiously 
 enough once the fact had been established 
 that I had read more novels than was good 
 for me, instead of restricting my reading, I 
 was practically allowed to read almost 
 anything I liked, on the basis that I had 
 read so much trash already that a little 
 more, a little less, could not do me much 
 harm. The influence of the book on 
 Louis XVII (by Monsieur de Beau- 
 [140;] 
 
A CHILD'S POINT OF VIEW 
 
 chesne) has, indeed, been even greater 
 than I realized at the time. Is it not 
 curious, however, that a child should read 
 novels with eagerness, and at the same 
 time realize better than the adults evi- 
 dently did how unwise such reading was ? 
 I may also add that my own education 
 during these years was somewhat neg- 
 lected, principally because the financial 
 condition of the family began to be most 
 unsatisfactory, and while the studies of 
 the boys, who had to be prepared for 
 military school, could not be interrupted, 
 something was saved by keeping no gov- 
 erness for me. Again I was allowed 
 novels so that I might keep busy and 
 quiet. 
 
 CHI] 
 
IX 
 
 LEAVES IN THE STORM 
 
V 
 
 IX 
 
 LEAVES IN THE STORM 
 
 ICTOR HUGO, in writing of him- 
 self as a child, says : 
 
 When the north-wind strikes the throbbing waves 
 The convulsive ocean tosses at one time 
 The three-decked ship thundering with the storm 
 And the leaf escaped from the tree on the shore. 
 
 We, too, were leaves in the great storm, 
 the storm of the religious and political up- 
 heaval in Italy, for our life began but a 
 short while after Italy had been made one, 
 while the country was still suffering in the 
 efforts to adjust the old with the new. 
 
 The religious phase of our life was most 
 affected by this unsettled condition of our 
 environment. It is here that the direct in- 
 fluence of historical events shows most 
 
 [145] 
 
.4 7" U S C A X CHI LDH O D 
 
 clearly. A brie: account of our family 
 history is necessary for a full understand- 
 ing of the situation and certain incidents 
 that I am going to relate. This history is 
 not without poetical interest. 1 mav add. 
 however, that whatever is known to me on 
 the subject I have found out for myself. 
 The reserve about anything that would 
 have led us to be proud of our race and 
 our position was almost ostentatious. 
 
 The famous chronicles of Malaspini 
 mentions the Cipriani among the sixteen 
 families who founded Florence. Five of 
 these families, including our own. were all 
 agnates, and descended from Galigaio, a 
 Roman patrician, who. the chronicles tell 
 us, was a companion-in-arms of Julius 
 C^sar, and assisted him in the Siege of 
 Fiesole. 
 
 The names of these five branches lend 
 some probability to this Roman origin, 
 though we, of course, know that during 
 C146] 
 
LEAVES IN THE STORM 
 
 the Middle Ages the nobility of central 
 Italy took pride in descending from the 
 Romans, whereas the nobles of northern 
 Italy preferred to trace their descent back 
 to the twelve peers of Charlemagne. We 
 found out this presumed Roman origin by 
 ourselves, and the fact that it v/as almost 
 forbidden knowledge made us particularly 
 delight in our discovery. 
 
 Malaspini mentions our family some- 
 times as Cipriani, and sometimes as Delia 
 Pressa, a name which, by the way, is also 
 given us in the modern Annuary. The Cip- 
 riani were staunch Ghibellines and good 
 fighters. Dante, under the name of Delia 
 Pressa, in the Sixteenth Canto of the 
 Paradiso, mentions us where he says: 
 "The Delia Pressa already knew how it 
 behooves to rule and in Galigaio's house 
 the hilt and the pommel were already 
 gilt." This passage, because it was in 
 Dante, we, of course, knew. 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 When the Ghibellines were defeated by 
 the Guelphs, the Cipriani were among 
 those who preferred exile to humiliation. 
 They would neither renounce their prerog- 
 atives and enroll in a Guild, nor change 
 their name. 
 
 Thirteen Cipriani, history tells us, were 
 captured by the Guelphs and condemned 
 to death. Twelve of these escaped, and 
 only one, Capaccio, remained in their 
 hands. Perhaps the name (Capaccio 
 means bad head) was fatal. He was be- 
 headed on the Canto di Capaccio, that to 
 this day bears his name, and is opposite 
 the beautiful balcony of Palazzo dell' 
 Arte della Seta, designed by Vasari. 
 
 Then my grim Ghibelline fathers went 
 into exile. One branch settled in France, 
 but died out. The other settled on the 
 Northern promontory of Corsica, Capo 
 Corso, where our branch of the family re- 
 mained till the beginning of the nineteenth 
 [148] 
 
LEAVES IN THE STORM 
 
 century, when my grandfather, Matteo 
 Cipriani, came back to Italy. It was he 
 who bought the villa at Leghorn, where 
 we spent the happiest days of our child- 
 hood. 
 
 To this Corsican influence I trace cer- 
 tain pronounced family characteristics, 
 principally tenacity and endurance. The 
 environment under which our race devel- 
 oped during these centuries was, I think, 
 a distinctly desirable one. We never be- 
 came court nobility, and we were thus 
 saved from the excesses to which the Eu- 
 ropean nobles gave themselves up from 
 the Renaissance to the French Revolution. 
 Moreover, it endowed us with excep- 
 tionally good physical constitutions, for 
 the development of the body was in every 
 way favored by the rough out-of-door 
 Corsican life. 
 
 The life we led during all these years in 
 Corsica was no doubt primitive compared 
 
 [1493 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 to the luxury that reigned at the French 
 and Italian courts, and we remained very- 
 near the Middle Ages. I can almost say 
 that in our family we skipped the Renais- 
 sance. 
 
 When my grandfather returned to Italy 
 the family, in spite of its long absence 
 from Florence, resumed its place at once 
 among the Florentine patricians. More- 
 over, the marriages contracted by my 
 aunts, and the daughters of another Cip- 
 riani, who had returned to Italy at the 
 same time my grandfather did, connected 
 us by close family ties with Italians of our 
 own rank. I do not think that my father 
 ever realized that his family had just re- 
 turned to Italy after an absence not of 
 years, but of centuries. We children, of 
 course, never felt this at all, though we 
 were very proud of our Corsican connec- 
 tions. 
 
 My Ghibelline fathers went into volun- 
 C150] 
 
LEAVES IN THE STORM 
 
 tary exile. When they came back the 
 struggle of the country against the church 
 and the rulers the Roman Church sup- 
 ported, had not ended. It is true that the 
 Guelph and Ghibelline parties had long 
 disappeared. It is true that no German 
 emperor was upheld against the head of 
 the church. But the ideal of Dante, of an 
 Italian strong and free, untrammeled by 
 the selfish bonds of the church and petty 
 rulers, had lived on. 
 
 It seems only poetic justice that when, 
 after their long exile, these Ghibellines re- 
 turned to the cradle of their race, they 
 should successfully finish the task their 
 fathers had begun. My uncles and my 
 father all fought bravely and unselfishly 
 for the freedom of Italy, and their party 
 finally conquered. Italy became one. 
 And the man who, as governor, first ruled 
 the provinces wrenched from the Pope, 
 the very provinces that a thousand years 
 
 E1513 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 ago Pepin had granted, thus establishing 
 the temporal power of the church — the 
 man was my uncle. 
 
 Am I not justified in seeing a grim 
 poetry in this? The Guelphs conquered 
 us; they pulled down our palaces, and 
 leveled them to the ground, strewing salt 
 over them; they drove us into exile, so 
 that even women and children faced every 
 hardship; and at last, after hundreds of 
 years had passed, we came back and in 
 turn conquered our conquerors. 
 
 In 1859 my uncle was Governor of the 
 Romagne. It was then, I think, that he 
 and my father seceded from the Roman 
 Catholic Church. In my father's case this 
 was much more marked, because he mar- 
 ried a Protestant, and decided to have his 
 children brought up in their mother's 
 faith, though curiously enough we were 
 all christened in the Catholic Church. 
 Personally I have always regretted this 
 C152] 
 
LEAVES IN THE STORM 
 
 secession, for I think that we would have 
 been much happier if we had grown up in 
 the same religion as our friends and rela- 
 tives. 
 
 The religious question was, therefore, a 
 burning one in my childhood. Relatives, 
 friends, servants, all were Catholics. My 
 mother was a Protestant, it is true, but 
 with her exception we met few Protest- 
 ants, except the governesses and the 
 tutors, and I confess that I antagonistically 
 associated Protestantism with them. 
 
 Our religious training was a curious 
 one. They did not try to teach us what to 
 believe, but rather instructed us carefully 
 as to what we ought not to believe. We 
 were told not to believe in saints, miracles, 
 and relics. We were told that Catholicism 
 stands for ignorance. This last state- 
 ment, however, soon aroused grave doubts 
 in my mind, since many of the persons I 
 esteemed and admired most were Catho- 
 C1533 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 lies. We were told that it was absurd for 
 a priest to give absolution; that confession 
 was an evil thing. And we listened in 
 silence. 
 
 I was the skeptic of the family. After 
 having been told how many things I was 
 not to believe, I learned to be ready to dis- 
 believe any one and anything, even what 
 my mother told me; not that I thought 
 she lied, but I simply took it for granted 
 that she considered it best to tell us just 
 that, and I did not dispute her right to 
 do so. 
 
 I remember distinctly that one morning, 
 when I was barely five years old, my 
 mother sent for Ritchie and me. After 
 having had our faces well scrubbed and 
 clean pinafores put on, we were taken to 
 her morning-room. Then she formally 
 began our religious instruction. Up to 
 this time I had only been made to learn the 
 Lord's Prayer in English; and I rattled it 
 [1543 
 
LEAVES IN THE STORM 
 
 off with very little concern as to what it 
 meant. This morning my mother told us 
 that there was a God. She also told us 
 that this God was perfect, all-powerful, 
 and everywhere at once. This last seemed 
 incredible to me, and so she explained 
 that he was everywhere, and could see 
 everything. No matter where a thing hap- 
 pened he knew about it. This information 
 she considered enough for the first lesson, 
 and we were sent back to the nursery. 
 
 It happened that this very day I saw 
 Ritchie throw a little embroidered waist 
 on the top of the mosquito-netting that 
 hung around our little beds, and when 
 the nurses were looking for the jacket and 
 Ritchie vouchsafed no information, hav- 
 ing perhaps forgotten what he had done, 
 I thought the time had come for a con- 
 clusive experiment. I thought I had my 
 chance to prove whether this Protestant 
 God they told me about was any better 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 than the scorned saints painted on the 
 walls. 
 
 I spoke no word while the nurses were 
 hunting. I did not cry out, as I should 
 have at any other time, "Ritchie hid it." 
 No, indeed; I waited for the good Lord to 
 tell. At night on drawing out the mos- 
 quito-netting the little jacket was found. 
 Then I informed the nurses I knew it was 
 there. This led to the belief that I had 
 hidden it there myself. I occasionally did 
 hide things, and their suspicion was not 
 altogether unjustified. But this time I de- 
 clared that I had not put it there; Ritchie 
 had done so, and it was unfair to punish 
 me. They took me to my mother to be 
 punished, for she inflicted all punishments 
 herself, and there I burst into tears, and 
 tried in vain to explain that I thought God, 
 who saw everything, and could do any- 
 thing he wanted, should have told the 
 nurses himself. 
 
 E1563 
 
LEAVES IN THE STORM 
 
 My mother and the nurses did not un- 
 derstand the situation at all. I was sev- 
 erely punished, and left to my thoughts. 
 As I have mentioned already, it was my 
 habit to boil inside, so after having wiped 
 my eyes, I took my punishment bravely, 
 but I remained a skeptic in the bottom of 
 my heart. 
 
 This skepticism was all the more pro- 
 found as I never expressed it, and it re- 
 mained unsuspected and uncorrected. In 
 a thoroughly skeptical spirit did I begin 
 the regular study of Bible history when I 
 was not yet eight years old. But there 
 were complications. 
 
 I had a governess then, the only one 
 among many of whom I have an absolutely 
 pleasant recollection, Fraeulein Anna, a 
 charming girl of about twenty, who 
 must have been an exceptionally good 
 teacher. But — fate willed it — she was 
 the daughter of a well-known German 
 £157] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 socialist, who was an atheist. Though I 
 heard the details about her life and her 
 family only much later, when I was al- 
 most grown up, yet even at the time I 
 knew that her father was something ter- 
 rible, a socialist who did not believe in 
 God, and that she had been baptized with 
 champagne. This did not shock me. In- 
 deed, I connected it in my mind with 
 the launching of a ship, a frequent festive 
 event in the ship-yards at Leghorn, and I 
 liked her all the better for not having been 
 baptized with plain water like other com- 
 mon mortals. 
 
 Again you might say, "How could your 
 mother, if she wished you to have any 
 religion at all, trust you to the daughter 
 of an atheist?" And I can answer, to be- 
 gin with my mother's religion was a pas- 
 sive one. She did not want us to be Cath- 
 olics, but her real interest in religious 
 questions seemed to end there. Besides, 
 [158] 
 
LEAVES IN THE STORM 
 
 Fraeulein Anna did not profess atheism 
 herself, and she had been put in our 
 house by the German Protestant clergy- 
 man at Leghorn. He was a fine old man 
 and my mother had great confidence in 
 him. 
 
 Fraeulein Anna was perhaps the only 
 governess who did not attack Catholicism, 
 but she did not go beyond this. She care- 
 fully made me learn the Bible history. 
 She made sure that I knew the names of 
 the patriarchs and their sons, and that I 
 did not confuse the deluge with the Tower 
 of Babel. She was, in fact, the first one 
 who taught me how to study, something 
 for which I am grateful to this day. If I 
 asked any questions, she answered the 
 practical ones, and dismissed any that 
 would have led to a theological discussion. 
 With prompt kindness she would get a 
 map, and, at my desire, show me the ex- 
 act position of the Red Sea, but she had 
 [159] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 nothing to say when I wanted to know 
 why Eve should be punished for eating 
 the apple before she had been taught to 
 distinguish between right and wrong — a 
 simple question, one which has puzzled 
 many besides myself. 
 
 Some points troubled me much. How 
 could God make the world out of noth- 
 ing? If he had even had a little grain of 
 dust, he might have made it grow, but to 
 make something out of nothing, and be 
 everywhere at the same time; these were 
 things I could not understand. With Eve 
 I deeply sympathized. I reasoned that it 
 was not fair play. If she knew what was 
 right and what was wrong, she might be 
 punished, but before she really knew that 
 a thing was wrong, she did not deserve to 
 be punished. This, of course, was in ac- 
 cordance with our own nursery rules, for 
 if we did anything we had been forbidden 
 to do, the punishment was severe, but a 
 
LEAVES IN THE STORM 
 
 first offense, when we could honestly say 
 we did not know it was wrong, was always 
 at least half- forgiven. 
 
 If I dwell upon these details, it is not 
 because I consider myself particularly in- 
 teresting as an individual, but because I 
 am convinced that my experience is that 
 of many children who grow up in a rel- 
 igion different from that of the people 
 around them, especially if, for any reason, 
 their religious interest is keen. Mine was 
 great, and continued intense for many 
 years. I do not think that my brothers 
 and sisters troubled about religious ques- 
 tions the way I did. They all, I think, 
 found it easier to obey in the spirit and in 
 the word. They were told that it was best 
 for them not to be Catholics, and to be 
 Protestants, and that sufficed. 
 
 Three years passed after Fraeulein 
 Anna first taught me Bible history. The 
 governess whom I have already men- 
 
 [161] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 tioned with particular dislike was with us 
 then. As I have explained, she was al- 
 ways arbitrary and often unreasonable. 
 Moreover, she lacked even elementary 
 tact. I did not respect her. Her attitude 
 toward religious questions was such that 
 in telling about them now I must expect 
 to be accused of exaggeration. 
 
 She encouraged my brother Alick to 
 make fun of the priests. This was and is 
 only too common in Italy among a certain 
 set of people, and particularly among the 
 men of the lower classes. To Fraeulein it 
 may have seemed funny and new, but I 
 thought then, and I think now, that it was 
 absolutely inexcusable. 
 
 She used to like to go to the Duomo at 
 Pisa to listen to the beautiful music at 
 vesper services. We children were not 
 particularly musical, and in order to keep 
 us from being bored, she had taught us to 
 nickname the canons as they sat in their 
 
 [16211 
 
LEA VES IN THE STORM 
 
 seats in the altar circle. This, it seems to 
 me, was all the worse, because we as 
 Protestants should have been taught to 
 respect the ministers of another religion. 
 And, besides, merely the respect due old 
 age made it wrong for us to nickname 
 them according to their resemblance to a 
 horse, or a dog, or a rabbit, or a fox, etc. 
 So well trained were we not to complain 
 of our governesses, that my mother did 
 not know of this till years later. 
 
 It was with this governess, Fraeulein 
 Helene, that the climax for me came, and 
 that I cast off both Catholicism and Pro- 
 testantism, turning to the older faith that 
 the Christians had crushed. One day I 
 found an old piece of newspaper that con- 
 tained the following item: — "Last night, 
 under the influence of Bacchus, some sol- 
 diers changed a temple of Venus into a 
 temple of Mars. The police promptly in- 
 terfered." 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 When a young reporter expressed in this 
 flowery way the drunken brawl of some 
 soldiers, he surely had no conception of 
 how it would for years affect the inner life 
 of a little Florentine patrician. 
 
 Greek mythology was perfectly fam- 
 iliar to us. In fact, playing the gods was 
 one of our common games. We all had 
 been given a name of some Greek god or 
 goddess. An older boy, who occasionally 
 used to play with us, was Jove; my sister 
 Totty was Minerva ; Ritchie was Mercury, 
 because he was constantly sent on er- 
 rands; and I, to my bitter sorrow, was 
 Proserpina. I protested with tears 
 against this, because they had called a boy 
 whom I detested Pluto, and even in a 
 game I did not want to be considered his 
 wife. But, as I have already remarked, 
 childhood is cruel. "The children," being 
 the oldest, had taken upon themselves the 
 right of distributing the parts, and did not 
 [164] 
 
LEAVES IN THE STORM 
 
 care whether they spoiled my pleasure or 
 not. When I appealed to my mother, her 
 decision was : "Why, your not liking your 
 husband makes your part all the more 
 natural." And so I had to keep my 
 name. 
 
 Of course, we had been told that the 
 Greek gods were no longer worshiped; yet 
 the statement in print was absolute. I 
 knew the words by heart — "Under the in- 
 fluence of Bacchus, some soldiers changed 
 a temple of Venus into a temple of Mars." 
 The police had interfered because — be- 
 cause, no doubt, the police did not wish 
 the soldiers to worship the Greek gods 
 any more than our governesses wished us 
 to pray to the saints. The thing was per- 
 fectly clear to me. I realized that once 
 again knowledge had been withheld from 
 us. The Greek gods still had their wor- 
 shipers. 
 
 As I thought the matter over my eager- 
 £1653 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 ness to have the worship of the Greek 
 gods openly established and not interfered 
 with by the police grew greater and 
 greater. 
 
 I have forgotten to mention, in telling 
 the family history, that Malaspini states 
 that one of my ancestors married a grand- 
 daughter of Octavian, the Emperor. Now 
 follows my childish reasoning. If we 
 descended from Octavian, the Emperor, 
 through him we went back to Julius Cae- 
 sar; from Julius Caesar we went back to 
 ^Eneas; from ^Eneas evidently we went 
 back to Venus ; from Venus we went back 
 to Saturn! When the Greek gods loom 
 large again we, who actually had de- 
 scended from them, would come into our 
 own; and they that ruled us had kept us 
 ignorant of this, just as they had kept us 
 ignorant of other things concerning our 
 family that we might justly be proud of. 
 I longed for the time when I should be 
 
 [166] 
 
LEAVES IN THE STORM 
 
 grown up, and could bring about the open 
 worship of the Olympians. 
 
 For a long time my interest in this was 
 keen, but as I never spoke about it to any 
 one, finally I almost forgot the whole 
 story. It only came back to me when 
 many, many years after I came across the 
 same trite expression in referring to some 
 drunken soldiers' brawl. 
 
 But I have not waited for the gods in 
 vain. They have come to me in all their 
 classical splendor, though not as I had 
 looked forward to them as a child. In art 
 and literature I have finally come to my 
 own. They have opened a glorious new 
 world to me, where I can find refuge 
 whenever the modern, Protestant world 
 seems too cold, too barren, too hard. 
 
 [167] 
 
X 
 
 TERESA AND THE CAT 
 
TERESA AND THE CAT 
 
 ON the whole we were very obe- 
 dient, and seldom broke the 
 numerous rules and regulations 
 of the school-room. But we were after all 
 children, real children, and once in a while 
 we fell from grace, which, of course, was 
 not without disastrous consequences. 
 
 My brother Alick, the best of us all, was 
 the one who got into trouble most fre- 
 quently. As his nurse expressed it, he 
 did one thing thinking of the next, and it 
 always implied mischief. It was Alick 
 who kicked a hole in the wall under his 
 desk. It was Alick who stuck his whole 
 finger in the ink bottle, was scolded, cried, 
 and wiped his eyes with the inky finger. 
 They could not rub the ink out of him for 
 
 C1713 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 several days. It was Alick who deliber- 
 ately walked into the sea and sat down 
 in the water to his chin, because he did not 
 want to wear kilts. 
 
 He wore a perfect Scotch suit, kilts, 
 pouch, cap, pumps, and stockings reach- 
 ing below the knee. In one stocking on 
 state occasions he was allowed to put a 
 real dagger. The dagger was Corsican, but 
 everything else was truly Scotch, and came 
 straight from England. When Alick was 
 first promoted to trousers only one suit 
 was made for him, and he was not ex- 
 pected to wear it every day. It nearly 
 broke his heart to be put back into skirts 
 after having tasted of trousers, but his ob- 
 jections were, as usual, of no avail. He 
 was told that he would have to wear out 
 his kilts. When he went out walking with 
 the governess, and Matthew and Totty, 
 and they reached the seashore, where they 
 often were allowed to play in the sand, 
 [172:1 
 
TERESA AND THE CAT 
 
 Alick deliberately walked into the water 
 and sat down. He had turned the matter 
 over in his mind, and had reached the con- 
 clusion that if he spoiled one suit a day, 
 the time for him to wear trousers could not 
 be postponed very long. 
 
 Teresa, an old woman who helped in 
 the kitchen, and a pet cat, once inspired 
 Alick to a piece of mischief that later he 
 heartily regretted. The old woman was a 
 poor, ignorant, superstitious creature. 
 The cat was a beautiful white Angora, 
 with very long hair, a big fluffy tail, and 
 forget-me-not blue eyes. It had been 
 
 given us by Countess R , a great 
 
 friend of ours. Count R was at the 
 
 time on the special staff of King Humbert, 
 and at royal request, he had brought a 
 brother of our kitten to Rome for Queen 
 Margaret. Our cat was, therefore, really 
 a well-connected cat. 
 
 Alick was standing in the garden when 
 CHS] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 the old woman passed, and stopped to ad- 
 mire the cat. She said in an admiring 
 tone: "Signorino, what a beautiful cat. 
 Sant Antonio bless it!" 
 
 The blessing of Sant Antonio was 
 necessary, for the Tuscans never admire 
 an animal without calling his blessings 
 upon it, nor do they ever admire a child 
 without calling upon it the blessings of the 
 Lord. We had been well drilled in this 
 ourselves. When in our walks we stopped 
 at the peasant houses the peasants usually 
 showed us their oxen, and then we were 
 expected to say: "Sant Antonio bless 
 them!" And when we saw a baby we 
 were also expected to say: "God bless it!" 
 This in order to keep off the evil eye. It 
 was I who made the never-forgotten break 
 of looking at a baby, and sweetly saying : 
 "Sant Antonio bless it," which, "the chil- 
 dren" claimed, mortally offended the peas- 
 ant. 
 
 C1743 
 
TERESA AND THE CAT 
 
 Alick should not have spoken with the 
 old woman at all, much less should he 
 have indulged in the opportunity of im- 
 posing upon her superstitious credulity. 
 But he disregarded rules and answered: 
 "It is n't a real cat. We only call it so be- 
 cause so rare an animal does not have a 
 name of its own." 
 
 "Why, Signorino, what is it?" 
 
 "It is a cross between a white bantam 
 chicken and a poodle." 
 
 The woman looked in amazement. An- 
 gora cats were unknown in the vicinity, 
 and the blue eyes of ours had caused a 
 good deal of comment. Besides, the cat 
 was an exceptionally intelligent creature; 
 it had learned to jump through hoops, 
 stand upright, and in fact, perform a lot of 
 tricks which popular tradition states cats 
 can never learn, so, to a certain extent, the 
 ground was prepared for my brother's 
 statements. 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 "Moreover," Alick continued, "this 
 creature is brother to the cat of the Queen, 
 and you must not speak of it, or address 
 it, as plain 'cat,' but always as Signor 
 Gatto. You must never pass in front of it 
 because it is an animal of royal blood, and 
 if you ever do, they will throw you in jail 
 at once." 
 
 Our intercourse with the servants was 
 so restricted that they may have looked 
 upon us with a certain awe — distance is 
 known to lend enchantment. This may 
 account for the undue weight my broth- 
 er's words had with the credulous old 
 woman. The respect she afterward 
 showed the cat was a source of great 
 amusement to us children, and none of us 
 undeceived her. Perhaps her fellow- 
 servants were just as amused as we were 
 and strengthened the poor old woman in 
 her belief. It is not difficult to imagine 
 that the men in the servants' hall thor- 
 
 £17611 
 
TERESA AND THE CAT 
 
 oughly enjoyed it when she asked them 
 whether the Signorino was right when he 
 said that the cat was a cross between a 
 bantam chicken and a poodle. Tuscans 
 have a sense of humor. 
 
 One day my father asked to have din- 
 ner served earlier than usual. The cook, 
 who sought to obey, sent Teresa to the 
 vegetable garden to get some fresh lettuce. 
 A little iron gate led from the garden 
 proper, upon which the kitchen opened, to 
 this vegetable garden, and as Teresa was 
 coming back with a basket full of lettuce, 
 she found that "Signor Gatto" had estab- 
 lished himself on the threshold of the gate. 
 She was going to brush by in a hurry, 
 when she noticed that my father was 
 walking up and down in the garden 
 smoking. Then she remembered my 
 brother's recommendations, and tried to 
 carry them out to the letter. "Signor 
 
 Gatto," she said apologetically, "excuse 
 [1773 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 me. I had not seen you. Will you please 
 let me through?" 
 
 The cat on hearing her voice filled the 
 whole space of the little gateway, arching 
 its back, putting up its tail and purring. 
 Teresa most politely repeated: "Signor 
 Gatto, will you please let me through?" 
 
 The cat continued to balance itself on 
 the threshold, and the woman in a more 
 imploring tone: "Signor Gatto, will you 
 please let me through?" 
 
 By this time her voice had attracted my 
 father's attention, and he stopped to watch 
 her. This probably embarrassed her, and 
 she grew excited. She pleaded more 
 vehemently: "Signor Gatto, will you 
 please let me through ? The Signor Gene- 
 rale wants dinner earlier, and I am in a 
 hurry. Signor Gatto, I beseech you! I 
 do not want to offend you, but I really 
 must get through. The cook will scold. 
 Signor Gatto, I implore you! Will you 
 C178] 
 
TERESA AND THE CAT 
 
 please step aside. Dinner is going to be 
 very late, and the Signor Generate will 
 scold." 
 
 My father, who evidently could not un- 
 derstand the situation, and who, more- 
 over, was absolutely lacking in a sense of 
 humor, spoke to her with sharp impa- 
 tience: "What on earth are you talking 
 about?" 
 
 Then she was terrorized. She thought 
 that my father had noticed how she was 
 going to brush by the cat, and that this 
 might land her in jail. So she began in a 
 wailing tone : "Signor Generate, I have al- 
 ways said 'Signor Gatto,' and I have never 
 stepped in front of the cat — I beg your 
 pardon, I mean the Signor Gatto. I am a 
 poor woman. I mean no harm. Surely 
 you won't let me go to jail." 
 
 My father succeeded in calming Tere- 
 sa's fears, and making her give a con- 
 nected explanation, which proved my 
 
 C1793 
 
.4 T USC A N C H 1 1 D HOOD 
 
 brother flagrantly guilty, not only of hav- 
 ing talked with her, when it was distinctly 
 understood that we should hold no con- 
 versation with any of the servants, but 
 also of having invented such a colossal 
 whopper. (The English dictionary says 
 that this word is colloquial, but it ex- 
 presses exactly what I mean.) 
 
 Alick got the soundest of sound whip- 
 pings, but Providence had endowed us 
 children with all the sense of humor she 
 had saved from my father's make-up, and 
 I am sure my brother felt that the whip- 
 ping was a slight fee to pay for the fun we 
 all got out of the story. The mere men- 
 tion of "Signor Gatto" would for months 
 afterward suffice to make us roar with 
 laughter. I am sure that Southerners 
 must know darkies capable of the same 
 credulity as Teresa. 
 
 Teresa went to Florence with us once 
 when my sister was old enough not only 
 [ISO] 
 
TERESA AND THE CAT 
 
 to take charge of the household, but also 
 to be interested in the elevation of the 
 masses. Like my mother, she had theo- 
 ries, theories which were put into practice 
 with surprising results. 
 
 My sister had made kitchen rules, and 
 one of these was that the servants should 
 once a week be allowed time to see the 
 Florence galleries. She wanted Italy for 
 the Italians, and she thought that when so 
 many foreigners flooded Florence to see 
 the old masterpieces, our servants should 
 not be deprived of this privilege. The idea 
 was a very good one in itself, for the 
 sense of beauty and the artistic instinct 
 of the Tuscan popolani is really remark- 
 able, and deserves to be developed to its 
 full. 
 
 Our Teresa enjoyed her excursions ex- 
 tremely. As a general thing she preferred 
 going to churches and looking at the 
 paintings of the saints. This she did quite 
 
 C-181] 
 
.4 TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 independently of Mr. Ruskin's suggestion 
 that religious art is the only true art. One 
 morning, however, when my sister had 
 allowed her to go on her artistic expedi- 
 tion, with the understanding that she 
 should be home at noon and help the cook 
 with the luncheon, Teresa did not turn up 
 at all. Lunch was over, and still she did 
 not appear. The time passed, it was late 
 in the afternoon, and still no Teresa. Fin- 
 ally, about six o'clock, she arrived com- 
 pletely worn out. 
 
 This is the explanation of her delay: 
 "Signorina," she said, "I have had the 
 hardest day I have ever known. I did not 
 go to a church this morning. If I had 
 gone, I should not have had to pray so 
 much. I went to the Specola, (the Floren- 
 tine Museum of Natural History) and I 
 thought I should never get through saying 
 requiems." 
 
 "Requiems!" said my sister in amaze- 
 [182] 
 
TERESA AND THE CAT 
 
 ment. "Why should you say requiems at 
 the Specola?" 
 
 "For the souls of those blessed dead, 
 Signorina. I got into one room at ten 
 o'clock, and I did not get through pray- 
 ing for each one until afternoon. Then I 
 started on the second room, and I could 
 not finish there because they put me out. 
 But I counted the remaining skeletons and 
 prayed for them in a church." 
 
 Teresa had been saying the prayers of 
 the dead for every skeleton of an ape in 
 the Natural History Museum at Florence. 
 No doubt, some tourist going by made a 
 note of it, and sometime the statement 
 may appear in print that in Tuscany the 
 popolani pray before the skeletons of 
 monkeys. 
 
 [183] 
 
XI 
 
 THE FOUNDLING 
 
XI 
 
 THE FOUNDLING 
 
 A YOUNG boy, a foundling, became 
 a member of our household for a 
 L short sad while. My mother 
 heard how he had been adopted by a Pro- 
 testant couple in very humble circum- 
 stances when he was still a mere baby. 
 They had kept him like their own child, 
 and had sent him regularly to the Walden- 
 sian school, where he had been made 
 much of as one of the most promising 
 pupils. When he was twelve his foster- 
 father died, and his foster-mother was too 
 poor to provide for him. It was no un- 
 usual thing to have such cases referred to 
 my mother, and she was seldom appealed 
 to in vain. 
 
 She sent for the boy, little Poldo, and 
 [187] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 his foster-mother. He was a fragile, most 
 refined-looking little fellow, with a white 
 face, and appealing dark eyes. If it is 
 true that race gives a visible stamp, the 
 boy surely was of gentle blood. The fos- 
 ter-mother, who was a woman with plenty 
 of common-sense and much natural dig- 
 nity, told my mother that she did not wish 
 for charity, but preferred to have the child 
 put in a position to earn his own living as 
 soon as possible. She explained that he 
 had been offered an opportunity to go on 
 with his studies, but she thought that sup- 
 port might fail him at any time, and that 
 he would then be left helpless, discon- 
 tented, and unfit for work. She and her 
 husband belonged to the working-class, 
 and she thought that the boy would be 
 happiest if no attempt were made to take 
 him out of his own sphere, though he 
 showed remarkable success in his school 
 work and passionate love for his books. 
 C188] 
 
THE FOUNDLING 
 
 My mother was not only very chari- 
 table, but also very enthusiastic, and some- 
 what romantic in her methods of charity. 
 The whole thing touched her deeply, and 
 she laid out a plan of her own from which 
 she promised herself the greatest satis- 
 faction. With the foster-mother's joyful 
 consent she engaged the boy, at a small 
 salary, as a servant at our house. His 
 work was to be almost nominal. He was 
 to clean the silver, and help the butler wait 
 on the table. It was agreed that this 
 would be a temporary arrangement which 
 in his financial straits would preserve the 
 lad's self-respect, since the boy's keep and 
 something over was to be provided. 
 
 In her own mind my mother planned 
 far beyond this, for she did not agree with 
 the foster-mother as to the future of the 
 child. She thought she would give him a 
 short trial on the present plan, and if he 
 proved himself deserving of all the praise 
 [189] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 that his teachers at the Waldensian school 
 had given him, she would let him share 
 lessons with my brother, who was just of 
 the same age. His future after that could 
 easily have been provided for, but before 
 deciding anything she wanted a chance to 
 study the child, and see whether it was ad- 
 visable to lift him out of his present 
 sphere. 
 
 My mother's plan was very wise in 
 some ways. The child belonged, by posi- 
 tion, absolutely to the lower classes, so 
 that she could not expect him to feel humi- 
 liated by temporary association with our 
 servants. She knew, of course, that ab- 
 solute equality with my brother was a 
 practical impossibility, and she thought 
 that the little orphan would be far more 
 contented if he came to the school-room 
 after a few days of merely relative hard- 
 ship. If she found out that it did not 
 seem best to give him a higher education, 
 C1903 
 
THE FOUNDLING 
 
 she intended to place him in a manual 
 training-school, where he might learn a 
 good trade. 
 
 The boy was extremely bashful, and 
 scarcely answered my mother's questions. 
 He hung his head and blushed. When 
 she asked him directly whether he was 
 satisfied to come and help Gigi, the butler, 
 he did not answer at all, and his foster- 
 mother took it upon herself to answer 
 affirmatively for him. But even if the 
 child had had the courage to tell my 
 mother that he did not want to come, she 
 would scarcely have listened to him, since 
 the arrangement was not to last. And be- 
 sides, in matters of education, even the 
 wishes of her own children had no weight. 
 She thought, however, that the child 
 might feel homesick, and bade his foster- 
 mother come and see him frequently for 
 the first days. 
 
 The woman and the boy went home, 
 
 [191] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 and only there did the child, in a tempest 
 of grief, show his sorrow at having, as he 
 thought, to give up all dreams of an edu- 
 cation, and become a common servant. 
 His foster-mother, though she loved him, 
 did not understand him at all, and did not 
 sympathize with him. She had been a 
 lady's-maid herself before her marriage, 
 and did not consider it a disgrace to be a 
 servant. 
 
 The next day little Poldo entered upon 
 his duties. The servants tried to be kind 
 to him, but he was so bashful, and so 
 silent, and showed so little appreciation of 
 their advances that after having seen to it 
 that he got plenty to eat, they left him to 
 himself. It amused them very much be- 
 cause after dinner he got out his books 
 and began to read and study. He evi- 
 dently had the making of a student and a 
 religious enthusiast. He had associated 
 closely with one of the younger teachers 
 [192] 
 
THE FOUNDLING 
 
 in the Waldensian school, and was so pre- 
 cocious that he must have been very much 
 of a companion to his elder friend. He 
 undoubtedly had heard a good deal about 
 the ignorance and the superstition of the 
 Roman Catholics, and, poor little fellow, 
 he felt altogether superior to our servants. 
 After a few days he went so far as to try 
 to convert them, and this slightly awoke 
 their antagonism and separated him from 
 them more and more. 
 
 My mother had told us about her plan, 
 and we were wildly enthusiastic over it, 
 for to have a foundling in the school-room 
 seemed like a chapter out of a story-book. 
 What did not suit us as well was the strict 
 orders not to play with him, indeed, not to 
 speak with him until we received my 
 mother's permission, and that was not to 
 be for full two weeks. My brother already 
 looked upon Poldo as his exclusive prop- 
 erty. We all thought of scarcely anything 
 [1933 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 else, and our imagination soon took its 
 usual long flights. We were quite sure 
 that in time it would be discovered who his 
 father and mother were. We generously 
 made him the son of some prince or some 
 duke, and while we did not desire any ma- 
 terial reward, we felt what a triumph it 
 would be when the whole world would 
 know that we had taken care of him at a 
 time when he scarcely had enough to eat. 
 Meanwhile the object of these plans 
 and these discussions wandered about, an 
 unhappy, lonely little figure, with nobody 
 to speak to, feeling the loss of his older 
 friend, the teacher, and of his companions 
 in school, most bitterly. If I add that we 
 had a beautiful garden, and that at play 
 hours he could see us running by and hear 
 us shouting in our play, while he was left 
 all by himself to walk around the kitchen 
 and in the vegetable garden, the pathos of 
 the situation is made only too clear. 
 
THE FOUNDLING 
 
 After a week the strain upon the boy 
 began to show. His eyes had grown 
 larger, and his little face had grown whiter 
 and thinner. The servants who observed 
 this tried to be kind to him, and to cheer 
 him up. They even offered to listen to his 
 religious instruction, but it was in vain. 
 The little fellow would have nothing to do 
 with them. He seemed so unbearably un- 
 happy that they told my mother about it. 
 She sent him at once to spend Sunday 
 with his teacher at the Waldensian school. 
 
 He came back a little brighter, but this 
 brightness soon passed away, and when 
 they told my mother that he could be 
 heard sobbing half the night, she decided 
 that in the shortest time in which suitable 
 clothes could be provided, she would take 
 him out of the servants' quarters, and let 
 him start work with my brother. It was 
 for the child's own sake that she did not 
 wish him to wear his livery. She felt that 
 [195 3 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 he was unfitted to be a servant, and she 
 wished him to get his chance to show him- 
 self worthy of an education before she put 
 him in the manual training-school. 
 
 My mother then sent for Poldo's foster- 
 mother to talk the matter over with her, 
 and here she met with unexpected resist- 
 ance. She finally almost overcame the 
 woman's objections that the boy would be 
 made unhappy if he were raised out of 
 her own station in life and that he would 
 in time learn to look down upon her. This, 
 of course, was not quite unjustified, for 
 the child showed a decided tendency, even 
 with the servants, to consider himself bet- 
 ter than the rest. My mother felt sure 
 that she could convince the woman to let 
 Poldo have his chance with us, but since 
 the latter's objection was so strong she 
 also thought it best not to speak with the 
 boy until she had his foster-mother's full 
 consent. 
 
THE FOUNDLING 
 
 Meanwhile Poldo was wretched. He 
 evidently was a morbid, excitable child 
 whom circumstances had made abnor- 
 mally sensitive. The very evening when 
 my mother had given orders for his new 
 clothes and had talked the matter over 
 with his foster-mother, a curious discussion 
 arose in the kitchen which brought the 
 pitiful episode to a tragic end. They got 
 to speaking of thefts, and old Gigi, the 
 butler, boasted of how nothing would 
 ever induce my father and mother to 
 doubt his honesty. 
 
 This was practically true, and old Gigi 
 had tested their faith in him. A few 
 years before burglars had broken into the 
 house in order to steal our silver. They 
 were as unprofessional as the burglars 
 who broke into my great-grandfather's 
 villa. They left the solid silver, which 
 was only marked, but otherwise perfectly 
 plain, and took the plated silver, cristofle, 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 as we called it, which was far more ela- 
 borate in design. When the police came 
 to investigate, Gigi was closely ques- 
 tioned. 
 
 "Did you hear anything during the 
 night?" asked the police inspector. 
 
 "Yes," was the respectful but guarded 
 answer. 
 
 "What did you hear?" 
 
 "I heard as though somebody were 
 opening and closing drawers." 
 
 "What did you think it was?" 
 
 "I thought it was the cat." 
 
 Nor could Gigi be brought to make any 
 statement beyond this. What saved him 
 was my father's absolute confidence and 
 the fact that he knew the difference be- 
 tween the solid silver and the cristofle too 
 well to admit that he could have had any 
 hand in the theft. His explanation of his 
 answer was characteristic: "I did not wish 
 to compromise myself." He thought that 
 £ 19811 
 
THE FOUNDLING 
 
 throwing the responsibility on the cat was 
 the safest way. 
 
 By the way, our burglars seem to have 
 been endowed with unusual sentiment, for 
 when these particular ones were caught 
 and questioned as to why they took the 
 cristofle and left the solid silver, they said : 
 "Those other knives and forks looked so 
 plain, we did not think they were any 
 good, and the Signor Generate had always 
 been so kind to us that we wished to leave 
 him something with which to eat his 
 breakfast." 
 
 But to come back to my story. The dis- 
 cussion as to what would happen in case 
 anything of value was stolen became gen- 
 eral, and finally one of the men, merely to 
 tease Poldo and without any malignant 
 intention, told the boy: "Well, if anything 
 is stolen the blame will fall on you." 
 
 "But why?" asked the little fellow. 
 
 "Because you always are poring over 
 [199] 
 
.4 TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 books, and that teaches people a lot of 
 wicked things. It is not good for any one. 
 Really good servants do not even know 
 how to read and write. All this knowledge 
 makes anarchists and thieves." 
 
 Then the little fellow became excited 
 and the others egged him on in mere fun. 
 
 The next morning Poldo's little bed was 
 untouched and empty. My mother sent 
 at once to the home of his foster-mother, 
 but he had not been seen. He had not 
 gone to the Waldensian school either, and 
 when the police were notified they could 
 find no trace of him. 
 
 Several days later the waves of the 
 Mediterranean washed his little body to 
 the shore. In his pocket was found a let- 
 ter addressed to his friend and teacher, in 
 which he said how he could bear it no 
 longer, because as he saw us playing 
 around in the garden and passed the 
 school-room and saw us at work, he real- 
 
 C200I1 
 
THE FOUNDLING 
 
 ized what a child's life might be. And he 
 added: "Now if anything is stolen, I will 
 be taken for the thief merely because I 
 love my books and they think that ser- 
 vants should not even know how to read 
 and write." 
 
 C201] 
 
XII 
 
 mama's ravens 
 
M 
 
 XII 
 
 mama's ravens 
 
 Y grandfather was consul-gen- 
 eral at Leghorn for many years, 
 and even long after his death it 
 remained the custom that any stray Ger- 
 man in any kind of need should be di- 
 rected to us for relief. Sometimes these 
 Germans would come with recommenda- 
 tions from the consulate, or from the Ger- 
 man Protestant clergyman, but many 
 times they simply got casual directions 
 from some native who knew that they 
 would be kindly received at our house. 
 And often some German wandering ap- 
 prentice would come to us for a square 
 meal. My mother always saw them per- 
 sonally and with real pleasure, for it 
 C2053 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 brought her back to the days of her child- 
 hood. We children felt rather antagon- 
 istic toward the German element as a 
 whole, and this because, as I have said, we 
 were not always on the best footing with 
 our German instructors. We found out 
 that, as a rule, my mother's kindness re- 
 ceived but poor appreciation, and that the 
 people who had been cared for were never 
 heard from afterward. We, therefore, re- 
 vengefully called these proteges "Mama's 
 Ravens." This shows that we were not 
 always good, and that we had been drilled 
 in Bible history. 
 
 The greater number of the Ravens were 
 German governesses, whose pathetic ex- 
 periences would fill a volume. 
 
 Once, for instance, in the time of the 
 Grand Duke, my mother received a letter 
 from a young German woman, who 
 claimed that she was held a prisoner in a 
 Jewish family. The letter was smuggled 
 C206] 
 
MAMA'S RA VENS 
 
 out of the house by the water-carrier, who 
 took pity on the young girl. 
 
 My mother went immediately to inves- 
 tigate the case. The Jews refused her ad- 
 mittance, and indeed, any kind of infor- 
 mation. My mother, as I think my read- 
 ers have already found out, was a woman 
 of quick action. She considered that to 
 treat the matter in an official way through 
 the German Consulate would mean a long 
 delay, so she went direct to the Grand 
 Duke, and asked him for two carabinieri, 
 who might assist her in her mission. The 
 Grand Duke granted her request over the 
 heads of all military authorities. 
 
 Imagine the dramatic effect produced 
 by my mother, a small, slender, stylish 
 young woman, as she again presented her- 
 self, flanked by two carabinieri, and de- 
 manded the immediate release of the 
 young German. The Jews yielded at 
 once. 
 
 [207] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 Yet even this girl proved a typical 
 Raven, for, after she had been rescued 
 from a position which was not only try- 
 ing, but dangerous — after she had been 
 kept as a guest at my mother's home until 
 she found suitable employment — she was 
 never heard from again. 
 
 The fact that there was no restriction on 
 our intercourse with these Ravens when 
 my mother took them in to roost, gave us 
 an intimate acquaintance with their char- 
 acter and habits. We grew to know them 
 very much better than our Italian servants, 
 with whom intercourse was very much re- 
 stricted. 
 
 In my time, when I was about fourteen, 
 my mother heard of a German governess 
 who had come to Leghorn to take a posi- 
 tion in a Jewish family. Upon her arrival 
 she found that she would have to sleep in 
 a room with seven Jewish youngsters, and 
 that, moreover, the most menial work was 
 n208] 
 
MAMA'S RAVENS 
 
 expected of her. She fled in dismay. She 
 was penniless and spoke no word of 
 Italian, and but little French. The Ger- 
 man clergyman reported the case to my 
 mother, who at once asked the woman to 
 come and stay with us till she was pro- 
 vided for. This is how Fraeulein von 
 Fetzen joined our household. 
 
 Fraeulein von Fetzen was at least forty ; 
 she was tall and angular; she had a mass 
 of false hair on the back of her head, and 
 her front hair was dyed. We children 
 discovered this as soon as hot weather set 
 in, for — the dye would run. 
 
 In her own eyes, the most important 
 thing about her was the little particle von, 
 which put her in the ranks of the nobility 
 and, according to her, established the 
 privilege of meeting us children on equal 
 grounds. 
 
 This Raven took much trouble to claim 
 a privilege which nobody disputed, for we 
 £2091] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 poor youngsters met our governesses on 
 a footing in which the superiority was all 
 on their side. Social distinctions were not 
 even discussed in the school-room. We 
 were treated with great simplicity, and al- 
 ways called by our first names. 
 
 It was a great delight to us, therefore, 
 when Fraeulein von Fetzen began to give 
 us our full name with the addition of the 
 particle von, which is not Italian. What 
 we quixotically objected to, however, was 
 the contemptuous way in which she ad- 
 dressed our governess, Fraeulein Schmidt, 
 a pretty creature who had won our hearts, 
 simply because she had no claim to the 
 particle von. 
 
 Fraeulein von Fetzen had another 
 weakness which amused us beyond words. 
 She thought herself young and beautiful. 
 Now, forty is not a decrepit age in itself, 
 but it does seem terribly advanced to 
 
 C210] 
 
MAMA'S RA VENS 
 
 youngsters in their early teens. Moreover, 
 she was absolutely homely. 
 
 Not less characteristic was her convic- 
 tion that her charms were dangerous. She 
 confided to Fraeulein Schmidt that she did 
 not like to have too much to do with my 
 brother Alick, who was already sixteen, 
 because she thought it might disturb his 
 peace of mind. And this absurd woman 
 could not see that Fraeulein Schmidt, 
 who, as I have said, was as pretty as a pic- 
 ture, quite unwillingly had herself dis- 
 turbed my brother's peace of mind, and 
 that, though she did not confide this to 
 Fraeulein von Fetzen, she and all of us 
 were well aware of the fact. Since Fraeu- 
 lein Schmidt had no von to her name, 
 Fraeulein von Fetzen thought that she 
 was a negligible quantity, and she made 
 this emphatically clear on all occasions. 
 
 Luncheon was a merry meal for us in 
 
 1:2113 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 those days, because my father and mother 
 were never present, and we could speak 
 as much as we liked without asking per- 
 mission to do so. Moreover, at dinner in 
 my father's presence we spoke Italian, and 
 this debarred Fraeulein von Fetzen from 
 any share in the conversation, while at 
 lunch she could make up for lost time, 
 keeping us in roars of laughter. Fraeu- 
 lein Schmidt was not a disciplinarian, and 
 this gave us a chance to breathe and be 
 happy. 
 
 One day I asked Fraeulein Schmidt: 
 "Fraeulein, why have you never mar- 
 ried?" 
 
 "Because nobody has ever wanted 
 me," she answered with a merry laugh. 
 
 I was mischievously conscious that 
 Fraeulein von Fetzen expected to receive 
 the same question next, but I would not 
 ask it. She, however, volunteered the in- 
 formation: "I cannot say that I am in the 
 n2123 
 
MAMA'S RA VENS 
 
 same position. Seven men asked me in 
 one year." 
 
 We raised a howl of protest. 
 
 "Fraeulein von Fetzen, you relentlessly 
 sacrificed the happiness of seven men?" 
 
 "Do you ever expect to go to Heaven?" 
 
 "Were none of them noble enough for 
 you?" 
 
 After this I got into the bad habit of 
 discussing love and marriage with Fraeu- 
 lein von Fetzen. My mother, of course, 
 was utterly unsuspicious of the pernicious 
 influence her beloved Raven was having 
 on her second daughter. Fraeulein von 
 Fetzen told me in detail about her seven 
 admirers, none of whom she considered 
 sufficiently noble to be worthy of her 
 hand. I, who had no personal experi- 
 ences, would in turn tell her wonderful 
 stories about personages that existed only 
 in my imagination, but that interested 
 Fraeulein von Fetzen tremendously, be- 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 cause I gave them high-sounding names 
 and titles. 
 
 Fraeulein von Fetzen was also very- 
 curious, and questioned me closely as to 
 family connections and family affairs. 
 This led me into temptation. 
 
 We had a very beautiful marble bust of 
 an uncle of mine who had died young. 
 Fraeulein von Fetzen showed more than 
 usual inquisitiveness in asking me all 
 about him. I cannot explain to this d,ay 
 what possessed me to make up a long and 
 connected story, in which there was no 
 word of truth, though I fully understand 
 how Fraeulein von Fetzen's breathless in- 
 terest led me to indefinitely continue and 
 elaborate it. 
 
 I told her: "Fraeulein, that is my fa- 
 vorite uncle. We say he is dead, but he is 
 not. It is one of those family tragedies 
 which, as you say, every real noble family 
 must have. If you swear to me on your 
 
 [214] 
 
MAMA'S RA VENS 
 
 honor as a true member of the German 
 nobility, that you will never breathe a syl- 
 lable to any one of what you hear, I will 
 tell you all about it." 
 
 Fraeulein took her oath. 
 
 Then I continued: "You see this uncle 
 of mine used to live in Corsica. He was 
 engaged to a most beautiful young girl, 
 the daughter of a duke. [By the way, 
 Corsica has no dukes.] One day, after 
 having been out hunting, he went to the 
 castle of his fiancee. As he arrived she 
 was standing on the broad stairs of white 
 marble. He came up and in fun pointed 
 his rifle at her, saying: 'I am going to kill 
 you.' The rifle was loaded, though my 
 uncle did not know it, and a ball went 
 straight through the heart of the beautiful 
 girl, who fell dead on the white marble 
 steps, staining them red with her blood. 
 Fraeulein, it upsets me too much to give 
 you the details of the tragedy, and I shall 
 [215] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 simply tell you that my uncle was broken- 
 hearted, and that he became a monk in a 
 Certosa convent, where they never see 
 any one, where they are under a vow of 
 absolute silence, and where they count as 
 dead." 
 
 Then I continued describing graphically 
 how these monks are never allowed to 
 speak except when they pass each other 
 and say in a low muffled tone: "Brother, 
 we must die." Fraeulein von Fetzen was 
 a Roman Catholic, and this part of my 
 narrative appealed to her particularly on 
 that account. 
 
 I had impressed it upon Fraeulein that 
 if it were discovered that she knew our 
 family secret, they might "try to get her 
 out of the way." Fraeulein had very ro- 
 mantic, unsound views about Italy, and I 
 took undue advantage of this. 
 
 My uncle, the Certosa monk, became 
 our favorite subject of conversation, and 
 
 C2163 
 
MAMA'S RAVENS 
 
 Fraeulein von Fetzen continued to be an 
 eager, interested listener. My stories were 
 beginning to give out when a luminous 
 idea came to me. I began to write a series 
 of love letters, which I claimed had been 
 exchanged between my uncle and his 
 fiancee, and which I got from the family 
 archives. As my father was not the head 
 of the family, this was a "whopper" 
 worthy of my brother Alick. We had no 
 family archives. 
 
 I knew that my story and my letters 
 would meet with general disapproval, and 
 that there was nobody in the family, from 
 my mother to my youngest brother, who 
 would countenance this sort of thing, or 
 see anything excusable in my perform- 
 ance; so I kept my own counsel, enjoyed 
 my fun all by myself, and continued to 
 elaborate the correspondence between Ri- 
 conovaldo, the fictitious name for my 
 uncle, and Rosmonda, his sweetheart. 
 
 [217] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 But I was not to enjoy this long. My 
 brother Alick came across a few of the let- 
 ters addressed to Riconovaldo. He was 
 shocked and horrified. Of course, with- 
 out explanation it was pretty hard to un- 
 derstand what they actually stood for. 
 His conscience compelled him to bring the 
 matter before my mother, and my mother, 
 after hearing all about it — gave me the 
 last actual whipping I ever had. 
 
 Fraeulein von Fetzen was one of the 
 very worst specimens of "Mama's Rav- 
 ens." She was ignorant, and her ignor- 
 ance was only equaled by her conceit. She 
 was inquisitive and indiscreet. With all 
 her false pride, she was an outrageous 
 beggar, and always wheedling trifles from 
 us children and from our governess. 
 
 It is characteristic of our whole system 
 of education that we should be so un- 
 guardedly intrusted to the hands of for- 
 eigners, simply because they were for- 
 C2183 
 
MAMA'S RA VENS 
 
 eigners, while such care was taken when 
 we came into contact with natives. I feel 
 strongly on the subject, because even to- 
 day it affects the education of so many 
 children of the higher classes in Italy. 
 
 While in our relations with our Italian 
 dependents the best side of our character 
 was appealed to and brought out, (I could 
 quote numerous instances of childish un- 
 selfishness and generosity which my 
 brothers and sisters showed) these "Rav- 
 ens" often led us to do things which were 
 far from commendable, and for which 
 they were actually more responsible than 
 were we. 
 
 Fraeulein von Fetzen had a mania for 
 relics. She found out that Fraeulein 
 Schmidt had been in Spain, and that her 
 former pupils had given her several very 
 beautiful silver medals of Saints. Since 
 Fraeulein Schmidt, like ourselves, was 
 Protestant, Fraeulein von Fetzen thought 
 
 [2193 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 that the relics should be hers by right, and 
 she kept asking for them. Moreover, her 
 request was made with irritating condes- 
 cension, for, as I have said, she did not 
 consider Fraeulein Schmidt her equal. 
 
 She also teased us to find out whether 
 we had any relics in the family that we 
 could spare, for, she argued that since we 
 were Protestants, we had no use for them, 
 and she might just as well get the benefit 
 of them. 
 
 She finally suggested to me whether I 
 could not find some relics for her in the 
 famous archives. When I told Fraeulein 
 Schmidt and the children about this, 
 Fraeulein Schmidt, who had altogether too 
 much fun in her to be a model governess, 
 said : "Why don't you make a relic for her 
 yourself? Surely that would n't be too 
 hard." 
 
 My sister took the idea up enthusiast- 
 ically, and between us we made a relic 
 [220 3 
 
MAMA'S RAVENS 
 
 which might have deceived a more intel- 
 ligent person than Fraeulein von Fetzen. 
 We took a piece of parchment from the 
 cover of some old book; we made extra 
 stains on it with rust and lemon-juice; 
 then we made up a long sentence in which 
 the words were taken from Italian, Span- 
 ish, Latin and French, and were jumbled 
 together in such a way that if they ever 
 fall into the hands of some Romance 
 philologist, he will be sorely puzzled. In 
 this jargon we said approximately: 
 "Fraeulein von Fetzen, with her von, is a 
 goose. She has shamefully begged for a 
 relic and now she gets it. May it do her 
 the good she deserves." 
 
 Then we took some of my hair, singed 
 it, and sealed it on with sealing-wax which 
 we impressed with a seal we had most in- 
 geniously made for the purpose out of 
 hardened clay. 
 
 As soon as we had finished, we brought 
 [221] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 the relic triumphantly to Fraeulein von 
 Fetzen, telling her that we had got it out 
 of the family archives at the risk of our 
 lives almost, for it had been in the family 
 a thousand years; we recognized that 
 since we were Protestants, the relic would 
 be best in the hands of such a true mem- 
 ber of the nobility as herself, and we in- 
 trusted it to her, if she were willing to ful- 
 fil the necessary conditions. 
 
 The most important of these conditions 
 was, that for the first three weeks she had 
 this relic she should recite her beads be- 
 fore it at least three times a day. If she 
 did not, the greatest calamity would fall 
 upon her house, for it was on these condi- 
 tions only that the relic could ever change 
 hands, even in the same family. 
 
 We also told her that the relic itself 
 consisted of a lock of hair of Saint Law- 
 rence, which had been taken from him 
 when he was being roasted on the grid- 
 [222 3 
 
MAMA'S RAVENS 
 
 iron, just before he asked to be turned 
 over, because one side was done, and that 
 the singeing proved the authenticity of the 
 relic. 
 
 Fraeulein von Fetzen accepted our 
 present with the greatest glee. Her con- 
 science was not in the least disturbed by 
 the fact that, according to our statement, 
 the relic had been taken from the family 
 archives without my parents' knowledge 
 and consent. 
 
 My mother found out about all this 
 much later, and was very indignant. I 
 myself by no means relate it as a joke. 
 We were very young, and this constitutes 
 our main excuse. It would have been 
 better for us to have grown up with a 
 superstitious belief in relics than to have 
 mocked the faith of others, no matter what 
 their weakness might be. I may add here 
 that in time a reaction against this very 
 levity, shown by our foreign instructors on 
 [223 3 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 religious subjects, set in, and that it al- 
 most led us back to the church of our 
 fathers. 
 
 Fraeulein von Fetzen left us after hav- 
 ing stayed with us many weeks. Like a 
 true raven, she flew away and never was 
 heard from again. 
 
 [224] 
 
XIII 
 
 MY POPOLO 
 
E 
 
 XIII 
 
 MY POPOLO 
 
 EXCEPT in summer at the Baths, 
 we had very little to do with other 
 children. When we went out walk- 
 ing we were expected not to stop and con- 
 verse with any one. Other children occa- 
 sionally called upon us with their parents, 
 and we would accompany our father and 
 mother when the call was returned. These 
 children scarcely entered into our life. 
 Some of them I have met, as far back as 
 I can remember, about once a year. We 
 called one another by our first names, and 
 said "thou," but the intercourse between 
 us was a formal one and ended there. 
 
 It was not until I was thirteen that I 
 made the acquaintance of a family of 
 children who became my intimate friends. 
 [227] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 The friendship established between us has 
 never been disturbed nor diminished. My 
 governess knew their governess, and it 
 was thus that we first met. There were 
 five girls and one boy, the oldest girl being 
 of my own age. 
 
 They were charming children, and even 
 under ordinary circumstances I should 
 have enjoyed being with them, but it so 
 happened that they took a great fancy to 
 me, and it soon grew to a boundless 
 admiration. They invested me with un- 
 limited authority. Whatever I said was 
 law. 
 
 I have stated that I came in the middle 
 of my own family, and consequently did 
 not count for much. To find myself 
 looked up to, flattered, blindly obeyed, 
 was a most delicious experience, and, I 
 may add, one which did me an infinite 
 amount of good. No doubt the children 
 of Poggiopiano (Poggiopiano was their 
 C228] 
 
MY POPOLO 
 
 country-place) exaggerated my good 
 qualities, but I am sure that they drew out 
 the best in me, and that I showed to them 
 sides of my nature which nobody else has 
 known. 
 
 Their devotion to me was a source of 
 amusement to all the grown-ups in both 
 families, and this is not surprising. After 
 my first visit to their house, they tied a 
 little white ribbon to the chair I had sat 
 upon, and this chair was used by the chil- 
 dren in turns, and under no consideration 
 was any one else allowed to sit upon it. 
 This alone would have been enough to 
 make grown-up people smile. My father 
 nicknamed them my Popolo, thus graphi- 
 cally summing up the relation between a 
 ruler and a beloved people. 
 
 To my surprise and delight their mother 
 
 finally persuaded mine to let me visit at 
 
 Poggiopiano. I had never been allowed 
 
 to visit my own relatives even. Indeed, 
 
 [229 3 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 that very summer an invitation to visit 
 some cousins had been refused, my mother 
 saying that she would never let us go any- 
 where without her. The unexpectedness 
 of my mother's consent made my delight 
 all the greater. 
 
 Poggiopiano proved to be an earthly 
 paradise to me. My being a few months 
 older than Giulia, the oldest of the chil- 
 dren, put me, in age at least, at the head. 
 Besides, to be granted absolute power, to 
 have every whim obeyed, was really in- 
 toxicating. I admit that the greatest 
 charm of my visit at Poggiopiano lay in 
 this undisputed sovereignty, which, how- 
 ever, did not exclude a most devoted love 
 for my subjects, my Popolo. 
 
 But there were other attractions — long 
 walks which we took to the different peas- 
 ant houses, the permission to do anything 
 we liked and go anywhere we liked in the 
 whole house. At my home we had to stay 
 [230 3 
 
MY POPOLO 
 
 in our own quarters. Indeed, my mother 
 did not allow us even to stay in our bed- 
 room unless we had something definite to 
 do that could only be done there. But at 
 Poggiopiano we could go into the cellars 
 and watch the men fill the barrels with 
 wine, or we could go up to the garret, 
 crack nuts, and eat all we wanted. 
 
 It would be impossible to enumerate all 
 the attractions of Poggiopiano, but one of 
 these, which appealed to me particularly, 
 was the haunted chapel. They had a 
 pretty chapel that was in disuse then, and 
 which popular tradition said was haunted 
 by an old priest. 
 
 Of course, we did boast of one or two 
 ghosts of our own at the villa at Leghorn, 
 but they were all rationally explained 
 away, and we were not expected to believe 
 in them. The children of Poggiopiano, 
 however, were really afraid of their ghost, 
 and thus endowed it with a charm of real- 
 
 [231 ] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 ity that my own slighted home ghosts 
 lacked. 
 
 The chapel was built next to the villa, 
 so that the facades of both stood in line, 
 and the two buildings were connected in- 
 ternally by long, narrow corridors. An 
 old priest had owned the place many 
 years ago, and it was his ghost that 
 haunted the chapel. A long room, for- 
 merly the vestry, had been turned into a 
 nursery. A small room next to it was 
 used as a dressing-room, and had a door 
 that opened into the dark corridor which 
 led to the wooden choir of the chapel. 
 
 To make a slight digression here: we 
 have in my family a reputation for bra- 
 very. I think that we live up to it naturally 
 and without effort, but I also think that for 
 the sake of living up to this reputation we 
 have often done things in sheer bravado 
 that we otherwise would have left undone. 
 C232] 
 
MY POPOLO 
 
 To use an expressive American colloquial- 
 ism, we never took a dare. 
 
 As soon as I found out that there was a 
 ghost at Poggiopiano, and that the little 
 ones were afraid of it, it became me to 
 show that, as a true Cipriani, I did not 
 know the meaning of fear. In order to 
 show off my hereditary courage, I threat- 
 ened at once to throw open the door of the 
 dressing-room and walk into the chapel. 
 This was fun in itself, for Luisina cried, 
 Baby and Paola caught hold of my feet 
 and held me fast, and I felt very brave 
 over it all. 
 
 But the haunted chapel had a genuine 
 attraction for me. Some time passed. 
 We had enjoyed talking ourselves into the 
 belief that there was a ghost around, 
 separated from the nursery only by the 
 long dark corridor that led to the upper 
 choir. The children of Poggiopiano en- 
 C233 3 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 joyed talking about the ghost far better 
 than having any immediate personal re- 
 lation with it. But that was not the case 
 with me. I was anxious to see whether 
 there was a ghost, and anxious to show 
 my superior courage in not being afraid to 
 see it. 
 
 Providence helped me, for I was al- 
 lowed to spend Christmas and the New 
 Year at Poggiopiano. It was then that I 
 made the rash boast that on New Year's 
 eve at midnight I should go all alone to 
 the haunted chapel. The details of the 
 enterprise I planned with some ingenuity. 
 On New Year's eve they sent us children 
 to bed about eleven, two hours later than 
 usual. We did go to bed, since we were 
 told to do so, but we were not told not to 
 get up again, and so we compromised with 
 our consciences and managed to undress, 
 to lie down in bed, and to dress again be- 
 fore midnight. It was I who insisted upon 
 [234] 
 
MY POPOLO 
 
 the details, telling the children I should 
 never allow them to disobey. 
 
 Our elders were laughing and talking 
 down-stairs, and it was merely a dramatic 
 instinct that made us glide around bare- 
 footed and on tiptoe, and whisper cau- 
 tiously. The children were all a little 
 scared. They were not, like myself, en- 
 dowed with a far-known, hereditary cour- 
 age, nor had they been brought up with a 
 fine and consistent scorn of the super- 
 natural. 
 
 We tiptoed carefully through the nur- 
 sery, and closed the door of the little ones' 
 dressing-room. Then we lighted the can- 
 dles we had brought with us, and opened 
 the door that led into the dark corridor. 
 As midnight struck, I walked in all alone. 
 
 My heart was beating a little ; my candle 
 
 blinded me, though I tried to shield it with 
 
 my hand; besides, the door open at one 
 
 end caused a draft, and the unsteady, 
 
 [235 ] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 rambling flame conjured up curious shad- 
 ows all around me, weird, moving circles 
 that made me afraid to step on the floor. 
 The cobwebs caught in my hair and in my 
 eyelashes, and I could not brush them 
 away, for I was using both hands to hold 
 and shield the candle from the draft that 
 might otherwise have put it out. My bare 
 feet were chilled by the damp cold of the 
 stone pavement, and I regretted having in- 
 sisted that shoes and stockings were not 
 permissible on a midnight ghost chase. 
 Perfect silence fell around me, and even 
 the sound of my own steps would have 
 seemed a comfort. I wanted to turn 
 around and see if the children were still in 
 the dressing-room, but I was ashamed to 
 do so. Finally I reached the choir. 
 
 "Now, I can go back," I thought, giving 
 a sigh of relief, but my conscience com- 
 pelled me to walk to the very middle of 
 the chapel. 
 
 C236] 
 
MY POPOLO 
 
 Then I knocked my foot against one of 
 the benches, and bending down quickly to 
 touch the bruised spot, I dropped my can- 
 dle, which left me in the dark. 
 
 Suddenly a winged monster flew 
 against me and almost knocked me over. 
 I tried to call, but my voice failed me. Un- 
 consciously I put out my hand for the 
 candle, and found it on the bench before 
 me. I grasped it, though it was of no use. 
 Then I turned and tremblingly groped my 
 way back. 
 
 Soon I felt the stone pavement under 
 my feet, and knew that I was in the cor- 
 ridor. I took a long breath and felt safe. 
 Then I heard the fluttering of the wings 
 again, and a weird, hooting sound echoing 
 through the vaulted ceiling of the chapel. 
 
 I tried to run, but my knees were so 
 weak that in spite of myself my retreat re- 
 mained dignified. Finally, to my inex- 
 pressible relief, I saw that the door which 
 [237] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 opened into the dressing-room had been 
 left ajar, and that in the shaft of light I 
 could see the children's faces. Slowly, 
 painfully, for my foot was badly bruised, 
 I reached safety. 
 
 "Quick, quick, or we shall all be 
 caught," said Giulia. "They are coming 
 up now." 
 
 "How pale you look," said Daria. 
 
 "I have hurt my foot," I said, "but it 
 does not amount to much." 
 
 "You are awfully brave for a girl," said 
 Pietro. "Why the girls here waiting for 
 you were more afraid than you were." 
 
 I did not answer, but quickly withdrew 
 to my room. 
 
 The next morning the children, who be- 
 longed to the happy tribe of the unscolded, 
 told their mother all about it before I went 
 down to breakfast. When I came down 
 my sense of honor compelled me to con- 
 fess that there was a ghost, and that I had 
 [238] 
 
MY POPOLO 
 
 been much frightened. My faithful Po- 
 polo were readier to believe in the ghost 
 than in my fear. 
 
 Their mother undertook to investigate 
 the chapel with us in broad daylight. We 
 all went in together, and found that I had 
 walked into the nest of a big white owl. 
 
 My exploits as a ghost-hunter only 
 served to confirm the children's belief that 
 nobody could be braver than I was. They 
 exaggerated and even attributed to me 
 qualities that I did not have. Yet their 
 confidence in me was deserved, for I took 
 my position as Capopopolo (Englished: 
 "Leader of the People") very seriously, 
 and tried to live up conscientiously to all 
 that the children believed me to be. 
 
 This conscientiousness is now most 
 amusing for us to look back upon. Giulia, 
 the oldest of my Popolo, claims that now- 
 adays little girls never are as serious as 
 she and I were. I do not know if this is 
 C2393 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 true, but I do think that we showed ex- 
 ceptional earnestness and eagerness in 
 doing what was best, without being held 
 to it by their mother, who was most 
 lenient. 
 
 I provided reading matter for them. At 
 my home we had a great number of chil- 
 dren's books in various languages. More- 
 over, I made a careful choice among the 
 novels which I thought it advisable to let 
 them read. In the case of novels that I 
 thought entertaining, but not altogether 
 suitable, I would, read selections to them 
 aloud, but would not allow them to get 
 hold of the book. 
 
 One of the books which they got to 
 know in this fashion was Ouida's "Under 
 Two Flags." When the omissions I had 
 made were hard to explain, I would simply 
 improvise. Young though I was I did not 
 approve of Ouida for children. 
 
 The children remembered "Under Two 
 
MY POPOLO 
 
 Flags" for a long time, and Giulia tells me 
 that she only got hold of an unexpurgated 
 version of it after she was married. The 
 same I did with some of the French books 
 I had been allowed to read myself, as 
 "Le Morne au Diable" by Sue, which 
 contains some most exciting passages. I 
 may say that my methods of expurgation 
 consisted, to a great extent, in cutting out 
 anything pertaining to love-making. I had 
 been surfeited with love-sick literature 
 myself, and I thought that novels might 
 turn children's heads and were not good 
 for them. 
 
 The willingness with which the children 
 allowed me to keep the books from them, 
 and read only what I thought best, illus- 
 trates our relations. 
 
 The influence for good that I tried to 
 
 exert on my Popolo did not end here. I 
 
 insisted upon improving amusements, and 
 
 I insisted upon maintaining control of the 
 
 n2413 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 play hours even when I was not with 
 them. 
 
 One of my ideas was to spend the morn- 
 ings in vacation writing stories. We would 
 take a volume of the Tauchnitz Edition, 
 copy a list of titles from the back, writing 
 each title on a separate folded paper, and 
 shake them up together in a basket. Then 
 we would draw, each of us three titles. On 
 one of these titles we had to write a story. 
 This for English days; that is, when I al- 
 lowed them to write in English. My Po- 
 polo had once had English governesses, 
 though they, too, had lately been turned 
 over to Germans, and we usually talked, 
 and always wrote, to each other in Eng- 
 lish. If, however, a story had to be written 
 in Italian, then we ourselves originated the 
 titles. It was only later that we wrote 
 stories even in German and French. 
 French particularly was a language my 
 Popolo did not enjoy. 
 
 [242] 
 
MY POPOLO 
 
 When I was away from them I insisted 
 that this amusement — it was an amuse- 
 ment for me — should be kept up. We got 
 copy-books, and by turns wrote composi- 
 tions in them, first English, then Italian, 
 then French, then German. We each 
 wrote one story a month. I have one of 
 these copy-books before me now, and I 
 wish I might quote from it. If children in 
 America could use the languages they 
 study (but do not learn) with such ease, 
 they would derive much pleasure and 
 much profit from it. 
 
 Even the children of Poggiopiano pre- 
 ferred English to French or German. 
 They spoke it with ease, though not quite 
 as correctly as we did, because they had 
 not had an English governess for some 
 time, they did not have as many books as 
 we did, and their mother did not speak 
 English. But this very year Daria won a 
 prize for a composition sent to "Little 
 
 [243 3 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 Folks" in England, and Paola wrote a 
 jingle which illustrates the facility with 
 which the Italian people assimilate a for- 
 eign tongue. The jingle runs: 
 
 "With much pleasure and satisfaction, 
 I 'm the daughter of Mrs. Jackson. 
 If you love me, 
 Put your head above me, 
 For with pleasure and satisfaction, 
 I 'm the daughter of Mrs. Jackson. 
 
 Call me Margaret, call me Jenny, 
 Still for that I care no penny, 
 For with pleasure and satisfaction, 
 I'm the daughter of Mrs. Jackson." 
 
 Little Paola, who was then not more than 
 nine, merely did what the Italian minor 
 poets of the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
 turies have done before her, she made a 
 foreign tongue completely her own. 
 
 The days I spent at Poggiopiano are 
 among the calmest and happiest of my 
 life. I go back there often, and for me the 
 place has never lost its charm. 
 
 [244] 
 
XIV 
 
 OTHER PLAYMATES 
 
XIV 
 
 OTHER PLAYMATES 
 
 WE had other playmates, but, 
 with one exception, none as 
 dear and near as the chil- 
 dren of Poggiopiano. 
 
 The one exception was a Piedmontese 
 child, a little older than myself, who was 
 my particular friend. Her father was an 
 officer in the army, and our friendship be- 
 gan one winter at Pisa, when her father 
 was stationed there. My childish recol- 
 lections of her are closely associated with 
 flowers, and with white cats. Indeed, it 
 was she who gave us the white cat that got 
 Alick into trouble. Her mother was pas- 
 sionately fond of flowers, and Fede's 
 house was always full of them. 
 
 What also made a vivid impression on 
 1:2473 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 me was that Fede's mother was a very 
 pretty woman, an English woman with 
 golden hair, who was wont to wear a close- 
 fitting dark green riding-habit. She filled 
 my expectations as to what a woman on 
 horseback ought to look like — in and out 
 of books. In my mind I contrasted her 
 tailor-made appearance with the flowing 
 veils and the tumbled locks of the heroines 
 in the Gartenlaube. Needless to say that 
 I preferred the English to what I consid- 
 ered the German style. 
 
 We were living in a rented apartment in 
 town that season, not in our own villa at 
 the Piagge. Fede was allowed to go out 
 walking with me, and on our walks we 
 would invariably go to the villa and pick 
 flowers. We would come back with our 
 arms full of tea-roses, for which Fede's 
 mother always gladly found a place. But 
 sometimes we would wait for her to pass 
 the villa on horseback, and then it was our 
 E248] 
 
OTHER PLAYMATES 
 
 greatest delight to bombard her with blos- 
 soms as she went by. Do you wonder 
 that she is associated with flowers in my 
 mind? 
 
 We had other playmates who were in- 
 teresting, but of whom I never grew fond. 
 They belonged to the same period, that 
 same winter at Pisa which stands out for 
 me more than any other, because I was 
 quite an important person in the house. 
 Baby and Lucy had died, Matthew was at 
 the naval academy, Totty was at school in 
 Germany, and only Alick, myself and 
 Ritchie were left at home. 
 
 My mother invited three English chil- 
 dren to share our lessons. 
 
 They were naughty, very naughty chil- 
 dren. Now we were naughty ourselves 
 occasionally, but it was not premeditated 
 naughtiness. We did not consciously and 
 purposely plan to do what was wrong. 
 
 I think that I really had an unlimited 
 £249] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 capacity for mischief, though it generally 
 was not allowed to come out. On two 
 occasions when I was with these English 
 children I realized that under proper cir- 
 cumstances I could not only have equaled 
 them, but excelled them, in mischief. 
 
 We had an Italian teacher at this time 
 who would give us the most unheard-of 
 subjects for compositions. One day she 
 assigned us an essay with the title "Meth- 
 ods in Education," and whose outline, 
 which we were expected to elaborate, ran 
 as follows : 
 
 "A mother goes out walking with her 
 little daughter, and the child notices that 
 the country road is all covered with dimin- 
 utive frogs. 'Mama,' says the child, 'did 
 the frogs rain from Heaven?' Elaborate 
 the answer of the mother, making her ex- 
 plain with sternness, reproving the child, 
 or making her explain with kindness and 
 condescension, that the frogs did not rain 
 H250 J 
 
OTHER PLAYMATES 
 
 from Heaven, but had come out of the 
 ditches on account of the recent rain." 
 
 The six of us had to write this composi- 
 tion — the oldest was not yet twelve, and 
 the youngest was eight. 
 
 It was I who suggested elaborating the 
 mother's method by making her use the 
 strongest language we knew of in some 
 essay, and the most gushing, sentimental 
 language in the other. Now, any normal 
 Tuscan child, consciously or unconsci- 
 ously knows an absolutely appalling num- 
 ber of cuss words, for the Tuscan people 
 rank as the most voluble and elaborate 
 swearers in the world. You will hear your 
 cabman swearing at his horse, your gar- 
 dener swearing at a cabbage, a passer-by 
 swearing at the weather, the government, 
 or even nothing at all, and always with an 
 infinite variety of words. You soon learn 
 the system. First of all you can take a 
 number of saints' names, and vary your 
 
 [251 ] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 swearing by connecting them with the 
 names of different animals, principally a 
 pig and a dog, or you can elaborate your 
 list by bringing in relatives, each name of 
 a relative being accompanied with a curse. 
 Besides, there is a fleeting fashion in 
 swearing, which brings wondrous expres- 
 sions upon the Tuscans' lips. One of 
 these that raged the winter our essay was 
 written was: "God in Heaven with no 
 clothes on and his hands in his pockets." 
 You see that when you resort to this kind 
 of thing, variety becomes infinite. 
 
 Now, we were strictly forbidden to use 
 any words that were not correct, but they 
 could not prevent our hearing them. 
 
 I told Alick my plan, and he, being older, 
 and having more to do with the men, 
 knew, of course, twenty times as many 
 bad words as I did. We duly elaborated 
 the mother's speech, and after having de- 
 scribed the mother, the child, and the walk 
 C252] 
 
OTHER PLAYMATES 
 
 they took, having stated that they saw a 
 number of frogs, we let the child ask the 
 question: "Did the frogs rain from 
 Heaven?" Then the mother answered 
 with a full page of consecutive swear 
 words. This we remarked was a stern way 
 of bringing up children. 
 
 This style of essay was adopted only by 
 us older children. Ritchie, and Ethel, the 
 youngest of our English friends, had to 
 pay the price of youth, and were not al- 
 lowed to use one single bad word. We 
 compelled them to make an elaborate list 
 of such terms as little darling, dearest 
 love, blessed love, golden heart, adored 
 angel; in fact, anything we could glean 
 from German and Italian combined. 
 
 The result need hardly be mentioned. 
 We wicked ones were summarily dealt 
 with. Alick and I could not walk straight 
 for a couple of days. But Ethel and 
 Ritchie, who had cried when we had not 
 [253;] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 allowed them to use bad words, were taken 
 out driving, and to the open-air theater to 
 see Pulcinella. And the wretched little 
 things never thanked us. 
 
 Our sentimental Fraeulein Helene was 
 with us at this time, and her love affairs 
 were progressing finely, especially on 
 Tuesdays, for on Tuesdays my mother 
 used to go to Leghorn to see her relatives, 
 and we had dancing-lessons. Then Fraeu- 
 lein Helene would converse with her lover, 
 and the dancing-master would be left at 
 our mercy. 
 
 He was a funny, nervous little man, 
 who had no idea of discipline, and who 
 would fly into a temper at any mistake we 
 made. The English children, of course, 
 shared these lessons with us, and their 
 naughtiness knew no bounds. They went 
 farther than we ever dared to go. 
 
 They would close the shutters of the 
 [254 ] 
 
OTHER PLAYMATES 
 
 large parlor in which we danced, and when 
 they had thus obtained sufficient dark- 
 ness, they would put half-spent matches 
 in their mouths. The light would show 
 through their teeth, and, dancing around, 
 they pretended to be little devils risen from 
 the lower regions. 
 
 Meanwhile, the mutually absorbed 
 Fraeulein and the tutor left us to our own 
 devices. 
 
 There is a limit to everything, however, 
 and one day the limit was reached. The 
 dancing-master declared that under no 
 circumstances would he ever come to teach 
 us again. He was dancing-master at the 
 Royal Institute of Sant-Anna. He was 
 no common low-born person, and we 
 might just as well know it. He taught, 
 and had always taught in all the aristo- 
 cratic families at Pisa, and never had he 
 seen children behave as we did. (I thor- 
 [255] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 oughly believe this!) He would tell our 
 mother about it, and he would never, never 
 teach us again. 
 
 The three English children did not care. 
 Their punishment never amounted to any- 
 thing. But we knew that it would go hard 
 with us if .any account of our misdemean- 
 ors reached our parents. I was the spokes- 
 man. 
 
 "Professor," I said, "you surely would 
 not tell our father and mother about this. 
 You like children to be gay." 
 
 "No," he replied, "I do not like chil- 
 dren to be gay when they behave as you 
 do. I think it is a disgrace. I am going 
 away and shall never teach you again." 
 
 Then we pleaded, but our pleading was 
 in vain. We had gone just a little too far. 
 We could not soften him. The other chil- 
 dren stood around dejected and fright- 
 ened. I had a streak of real impudence in 
 my make-up, and I argued just a little too 
 
 12562 
 
OTHER PLAYMATES 
 
 long. The dancing-master grew seriously 
 angry at me. He pulled out his pocket- 
 book, and producing a card on which his 
 name was printed with many flourishes, 
 this card he handed to me. 
 
 He shouted to me dramatically: "See 
 who I am. See if I am the kind of a per- 
 son with whom you could allow yourself 
 such naughtiness." 
 
 My readers must allow me an abso- 
 lutely necessary digression. Dueling was 
 not, and is not to-day, uncommon in Italy. 
 I have stated that my family had a reputa- 
 tion for bravery. This reputation involved 
 stories of numerous duels wrongly attrib- 
 uted to my father and my uncle, and of 
 which rumors had reached the schoolroom. 
 Even the little story in which "Danke 
 sehr," was misunderstood for "Donkey, 
 Sir," and led to an encounter on the field 
 of honor, shows how early we were famil- 
 iar with the idea of dueling. In fact, 
 [257] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 we knew more than children generally 
 do about it. We should, for instance, 
 never have said that a party to a 
 duel won or lost, a common mistake even 
 for Italians. Now, we had an old French 
 humorous magazine, in which the follow- 
 ing illustrated joke, which my father had 
 explained to me, was to be found: The 
 sketch represented a theater, and two men, 
 who had risen from their seats, were evi- 
 dently having an argument. Each held a 
 card in his hand. Below this was written : 
 
 "Monsieur, this is my card." 
 "Monsieur, this is mine." 
 
 These gentlemen had exchanged the cards of 
 their tailors. 
 
 My father had explained this joke to 
 me, and that is how, though so young, I 
 understood that gentlemen before fighting 
 a duel exchange cards, and then send 
 each other their seconds. To return to 
 my story : 
 
 [258] 
 
OTHER PLAYMATES 
 
 When the dancing-master handed me 
 his card, I accepted it, and replied with 
 great dignity: "Sir, I have no card to re- 
 turn, but you know my name. I cannot 
 fight, but you will find my father always 
 ready to fight a duel for me. We shall 
 send you our seconds." 
 
 This took the poor little man's breath 
 away. I suppose that the mere thought of 
 fighting a duel froze the blood in his veins, 
 not to mention fighting a duel with my 
 father. 
 
 Tremblingly he answered: "Why, what 
 do you mean? I don't want to fight a 
 duel." 
 
 I noticed quickly enough that he was 
 frightened, and I took an impish advan- 
 tage of the situation. "If you did not 
 want to fight a duel, why did you insult 
 me by offering me your card ? Gentlemen 
 only give their cards when they want to 
 fight. Papa says so. (Which was de- 
 cidedly stretching my father's statement.) 
 C259] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 Papa will be glad to fight you. He is n't 
 afraid. He does n't care about one duel 
 more or less. He likes it!" Which was 
 doubly absurd, as my father's last duel 
 had been fought long before I was born. 
 
 But the dancing-master did not realize 
 this. He first protested, then apologized, 
 and finally abjectly begged for mercy: 
 "Signorina Lisi, you know that I did not 
 mean to insult you. You would not cause 
 the death of a poor man? In all my life 
 I have never held a sword in my hand." 
 
 Then Alick put in a word: "Papa would 
 not mind fighting with pistols. All you Ve 
 got to do now is to find seconds." 
 
 The man actually trembled. He did 
 not know my father personally at all, and 
 he did not realize that he was too cour- 
 teous and too gentle to allow our taking 
 advantage of any one's timidity in this 
 way. I wonder sometimes if Papa, who 
 has, as I have said, little sense of humor, 
 [260 3 
 
OTHER PLAYMATES 
 
 would have seen anything funny in the 
 terror of the poor little dancing-master be- 
 cause he had involuntarily challenged me 
 to a duel. 
 
 Finally we compromised. "The Pro- 
 fessor of Dancing at the Royal Institute 
 of Sant-Anna" did not tell how naughty 
 we had been ; we promised to behave bet- 
 ter, and kept our promise ; and we did not 
 tell our father to fight a duel for me. 
 
 Meanwhile, Fraeulein and the tutor 
 were blissfully progressing in their love 
 affairs. 
 
 C261] 
 
XV 
 
 THE END 
 
F 
 
 XV 
 
 THE END 
 
 "> ATE has taken me away from my 
 own country, and has robbed me 
 of all that seemed rightfully mine 
 by inheritance, but nothing can rob me of 
 the reminiscences of my childhood, and 
 nothing in life is dearer to me. 
 
 I find others who scarcely remember 
 back of their ninth and tenth years. Life 
 for them begins then. With me it is differ- 
 ent. The sorrows and joys that have come 
 since have not influenced my life as deeply 
 as those of my childhood and my girl- 
 hood. 
 
 It was not all happiness. Death came. 
 First Baby and Lucy died, the poor little 
 victims of diphtheria. Next we lost Alick, 
 
 C2653 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 the greatest sorrow I have known. The 
 loss of our fortune brought with it anx- 
 iety and trouble for all, and finally led, 
 when I was a mere girl, to the breaking-up 
 of the family and voluntary exile for two 
 of us. 
 
 We might have been happier if we had 
 been brought up a little less strictly, if our 
 personal inclinations, our personal desires 
 had not always been pitilessly sacrificed to 
 what was considered for the best intel- 
 lectually. But these trials were not with- 
 out great compensation. 
 
 We were not prepared for happiness, 
 but we were prepared to go through life 
 with courage, self-control, an uncom- 
 promising sense of honor and justice, and, 
 I think I may claim, unselfishness. We 
 learned that duties in life always out- 
 weigh privileges, and that personal satis- 
 faction is of small account. Last but not 
 least, we learned how to work and how to 
 [266] 
 
THE END 
 
 study. Our instructors, by stern rule and 
 individual care, did for us what the Amer- 
 ican public school teachers in the crowded 
 class-room can never do, and this has 
 stood us in good stead. 
 
 Nor would I have any one think that I 
 judge our foreign teachers too harshly. 
 The mistakes they made were often un- 
 avoidable. They generally were young. 
 They always were strangers in the coun- 
 try, and consequently knew nothing of 
 our customs and those intimate character- 
 istics which make up the difference of race. 
 In our own family there were interesting 
 and curious peculiarities due to the his- 
 torical environment cumulative through 
 many centuries, and the mingling of Ita- 
 lian, Corsican and German blood, which 
 made us in some ways different from other 
 children, and consequently, harder to un- 
 derstand. The religious problem in itself 
 was more than inexperienced young 
 C267] 
 
A TUSCAN CHILDHOOD 
 
 women, generally under twenty-three 
 years of age, could be expected to solve. 
 
 Yet even their mistakes were, thank 
 Heaven, not without good effects. The 
 unreasonable sternness which I have often 
 met with as a child, has later in many 
 cases made me more indulgent toward 
 others, for I remembered only too keenly 
 what I had suffered in similar circum- 
 stances myself. And last but not least, I 
 owe to the surfeit of German novels my 
 keen appreciation of sane English litera- 
 ture. I could never have appreciated 
 Thackeray as I did if I had not been pre- 
 pared for reading him by the Garten- 
 laube; and my intense enjoyment of Mark 
 Twain is, I am sure, due to the same 
 reaction. 
 
 And whatever the unnecessary hard- 
 ships, whatever the unnecessary trials of 
 our childhood may have been, they are 
 fully compensated by the strong love they 
 [2681] 
 
THE END 
 
 fostered between us brothers and sisters, 
 a love upon which death has set the seal 
 that bars all change. Through this bond 
 of our childhood we remain seven, though 
 "some of us in the churchyard lie" and the 
 rest are separated by lands and seas. 
 
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