person, for we had been warned not to wear black and not to wear hats, bonnets being de rigueur. As I do not own a bonnet, Mrs. Palmer kindly lent me a charming one, fresh from Paris—a few days later, when she was received by the Pope, she wore my Spanish mantilla. The Queen, who was seated on a sofa, rose as we entered and shook hands cordially with us. She is still beautiful, her hair magnificent, her eyes kind and keen. When you visit royalty you must only speak when you are spoken to; the choice of the topic of conversation thus remains with the royal personage. You must always say “your Majesty,” and you must make three reverences on entering and leaving the presence. In all this, I was tutored by Marion Crawford, who has often been “received,” and whose books the Queen is said to read with pleasure. She speaks English perfectly, by the way. She had seen an article in a late magazine—The Century, I think—on American country houses; she spoke of those at Newport, and said that, “judging from the illustrations, they must be very fine.” She showed us a grand piano at the end of the room, saying that it was an American instrument, a Steinway, and that “it had a very brilliant action.” With Mrs. Palmer the Queen spoke of the World’s Fair. Mr. MacVeagh had presented her with a copy of the book I edited on the Woman’s Department of the Chicago Exposition. The audience lasted about twenty minutes; then the Queen rose, the signal for us to withdraw. We made our three courtesies and backed successfully from the room. The Queen is much beloved; she has real charm, besides being good and clever.
Yesterday I went to Mr. William Story’s studio. The garden is lovelier than ever, the climbing vines that mask the dead wall make a rustling screen of cool green in which the birds build their nests. I waited in the studio among the statues—most of them old friends of mine—and found my particular tassel on the fringed robe of the marble Sardanapalus. One day, seventeen years ago, when Mr. Story was working on the clay, he let me take his modelling tool and add a few touches to the fringe. I have seen a copy of this statue in Lord Battersea’s fine house in London opposite the Marble Arch of Hyde Park. When Mr. Story came in—much as you remember him, the same graceful, brilliant talker, only with a new pensive note since his wife’s death—we talked of the old days at Dieppe, of the meetings in the studio there, when he and my mother read aloud from the books they were writing, and Mrs. Story gave us tea and read us Mallock’s “New Republic,” published that year; it must have been the summer of 1878. Mr. Story remembered the mornings on the plage when we sat on the warm sea sand under big red umbrellas watching “the boys” tumbling in the surf, and mamma’s calling Waldo “the amber god,” and Julian “a young leopard,” as he swam and dove through the waves like a merman. I reminded him of the little poem he wrote in our autograph book, and showed him the locket Mrs. Story gave me with a picture of herself and Pippa, the funny little pug dog she took with her wherever she went. We both remembered how Pippa behaved the day they left Dieppe when she saw the handbag in which she always travelled. She bit and scratched the bag, whined and generally remonstrated. Once inside the satchel, however, she was perfectly quiet and never betrayed her presence by barking en route.
Mr. Story showed me the monument he is modelling for Mrs. Story’s grave—a kneeling figure of an angel leaning over a classic altar. The face, every line of the figure, every finger of the hand, each feather of the drooping wings seems to weep. He calls it the Genius of Grief. This last expression of a great life love gripped me by the heart. It is to be placed in the Protestant cemetery here (where lovely Jennie Crawford is buried) not far from the corner where the ashes of Shelley were interred, and near the tombstone of Keats with its familiar inscription—
“Here lies one whose name is writ in water.”
St. Agnello di Sorrento, March 18, 1895.
Last Monday we left Rome in a rain-storm and came here to break up a pair of obstinate colds. We are delightfully established at the Cocumella, an old Jesuit monastery turned into a hotel. There is less of what Hawthorne calls the odor of sanctity—a peculiar mildewed smell the monks leave behind them—than is usual in such places. Our windows command an astonishing view of the Bay of Naples and Mt. Vesuvius. To the right, about a quarter of a mile away, is Villa Crawford, where we are most kindly welcomed by the ladies; the man of the house is away. The children are charming; the villa ideal; it stands on the edge of a high cliff leaning over the sea. The grounds, filled with flowers and fruit-trees, are seamed with quaintly paved walks. On the left of the house is a terrace, where they dine in summer. Here a flaming heart in gray and white paving-stones took my fancy. The house is large and luxurious; there are roses everywhere inside and out.
To-day is Palm Sunday. The chambermaid who brings my morning coffee brought me a bit of olive-branch, instead of palm, from early service. Later we went to high mass at the cathedral in Sorrento. The procession was headed by the bishop, his acolytes, and some smart young canons in rose-colored satin capes. After the mass the procession marched through the town, led by a group of bronzed fishermen and boys dressed in white robes, with bright blue moiré capes, and loose oriental white hoods over their heads. They all carried yellow palm branches in their hands. It was the most perfect contrast of color imaginable.
Yesterday I saw the nets hauled in. The men and women, old and young, form a line upon the beach, take hold upon the rope, and with a graceful, swinging motion pull in the seine inch by inch, as they did in the days of St. Peter. The Sorrentines are a handsome and seem a kindly people; there are comparatively few beggars here.
Throughout the Piano di Sorrento thousands of men and women are employed in the manufacture of silk stockings, scarfs, carved and inlaid wood, coral ornaments, tortoise-shell combs, and jewelry. I dare not enter a shop for fear of temptation. The Italian spoken is far pleasanter than the nasal Neapolitan; the chief peculiarity is the dropping of the final vowel. Maria, the dark-eyed chambermaid, asks if she shall make the lett, for letto (bed), and speaks of Sorrent, doman, and Sabad, meaning Sorrento, domani (to-morrow), and Sabato (Saturday).
The trees in the garden are laden with oranges and lemons, the feast of the roses is beginning, the birds are singing. The service of the hotel is excellent, the table quite good enough, our room has a fireplace and afternoon sun; for all this, food and wine included, we pay six francs—one dollar and twenty cents—a day, with permission to roam in the garden and pick as many oranges and roses as we like. I am reminded of Hugh Norman’s saying, “When I have only a dollar and a half a day left to live on, I shall retire to the Cocumella and pass the rest of my life there.” We have uva secca for luncheon, grapes dipped in wine and spices, rolled up with bits of citron in grape-leaves, tied in little bundles, and roasted. They may be kept half the year, and are among the dainties of the world. The miniature Italian count who married Mrs. Tom Thumb, veuve, said when he came to take tea at our house, “In Italia si mangia bene (In Italy one eats well).” He was right; we hear less about Italian than about French cookery, but it is quite as good—the range of dishes is wider and shows more imagination. There is a great deal about cooking in my letters; so there is in life. Fire, cookery, and civilization seem to be inseparable. Speaking of fire, the women about here say that Vesuvius, across the bay there, sets a bad example smoking his eternal pipe. The men sit watching him, presently they imitate him, and try and see how big a cloud of smoke they can make.
Vesuvius dominates the whole landscape. He finally got the better of us, drew us like a magnet; so, finding that the ascent can be made from here as well as anywhere, we gave a day to it. The road, an ascending spiral, embraces the great black mountain like the coils of a serpent. At first it leads through pleasant vineyards; when these are left behind the dreadful lava fields begin. The weird forms of the petrified rivers of lava, once red and molten, now grim and black, suggest human bodies writhing in the clutch of horrid monsters. Here a huge trunk madly wrenches itself from the toils, there a vast body lies supine and agonized, the last resistance passed. When we left our carriage at the foot of the funicular railway, I felt I had passed through several circles of the Inferno. Dante must have received many of the impressions he transmits to us from Vesuvius. At the summit, when I looked down into the crater, at the slippery, slimy sides, with their velvet bloom of sulphur, I saw where the fathers of the Church and the early painters, Fra Angelico among them, got their ideas of hell. Marcus Aurelius, my guide, bibulous, muscular, with a grip of iron, found a point from which, when the wind lifted the veil of