Dearest: I cannot say I have seen Pisa, for the majority had
their way, and we simply skipped into it, got ourselves bumped down at
the Duomo and Campo Santo for two hours, fell exhausted to bed, and
skipped out again by the first train next morning. Over the walls of the
Campo Santo are some divine crumbs of Benozzo Gozzoli (don't expect me
ever to spell the names of dead painters correctly: it is a politeness
one owes to the living, but the famous dead are exalted by being spelt
phonetically as the heart dictates, and become all the better company
for that greatest of unspelled and spread-about names--Shakspere,
Shakspeare, Shakespeare--his mark, not himself). Such a long parenthesis
requires stepping-stones to carry you over it: "crumbs" was the last
(wasn't a whole loaf of bread a stepping-stone in one of Andersen's
fairy-tales?): but, indeed, I hadn't time to digest them properly. Let
me come back to them before I die, and bury me in that inclosure if you
love me as much then as I think you do now.
The Baptistry has a roof of echoes that is wonderful,--a mirror of sound
hung over the head of an official who opens his mouth for centimes to
drop there. You sing notes up into it (or rather you don't, for that is
his perquisite), and they fly circling, and flock, and become a single
chord stretching two octaves: till you feel that you are living inside
what in the days of our youth would have been called "the sound of a
grand Amen."
The cathedral has fine points, or more than points--aspects: but the
Italian version of Gothic, with its bands of flat marbles instead of
moldings, was a shock to me at first. I only begin to understand it now
that I have seen the outside of the Duomo at Florence. Curiously enough,
it doesn't strike me as in the least Christian, only civic and splendid,
reminding me of what Ruskin says about church architecture being really
a dependant on the feudal or domestic. The Strozzi Palace is a beautiful
piece of street-architecture; its effect is of an iron hand which gives
you a buffet in the face when you look up and wonder--how shall I climb
in? I will tell you more about insides when I write next.
I fear my last letter to you from Lucerne may either have strayed, or not
even have begun straying: for in the hurry of coming away I left it,
addressed, I _think_, but unstamped; and I am not sure that that
particular hotel will be Christian enough to spare the postage out of the
bill, which had a galaxy of small extras running into centimes, and
suggesting a red-tape rectitude that would not show blind
twenty-five-centime gratitude to the backs of departed guests. So be
patient and forgiving if I seem to have written little. I found two of
yours waiting for me, and cannot choose between them which I find most
dear. I will say, for a fancy, the shorter, that you may ever be
encouraged to write your shortest rather than none at all. One word from
you gives me almost as much pleasure as twenty, for it contains all your
sincerity and truth; and what more do I want? Yon bless me quite. How many
perfectly happy days I owe to you, and seldom dare dream that I have made
any beginning of a return! If I could take one unhappy day out of your
life, dearest, the secret would be mine, and no such thing should be left
in it. Be happy, beloved! oh, happy, happy,--with me for a partial
reason--that is what I wish!
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