GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Rome, 4-6 April 1860
Title
GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Rome, 4-6 April 1860
Title
GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Rome, 4-6 April 1860
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve
Date(s)
- 1860-04-04–<br /> 1860-04-06
Place
Rome
Letter Content
GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Rome, 4-6 April 1860
Text: Cross, II, 193-198.
A wet day for the first time since we left Paris! That assists our consciences considerably in urging us to write our letters on this fourth day at Rome, for I will not pretend that writing a letter, even to you, can be anything more alluring than a duty when there is a blue sky over the Coliseum and the Arch of Constantine, and all the other marvels of this marvellous place. Since our arrival in the middle of Sunday, I have been gradually rising from the depth of disappointment to an intoxication of delight; and that makes me wish to do for you what no one ever did for me -- warn you that you must expect no grand impression on your first entrance into Rome, at least if you enter it from Civita Vecchia. My heart sank, as it would if you behaved shabbily to me, when I looked through the windows of the omnibus as it passed through street after street of ugly modern Rome, and in that mood the dome of St Peter's and the Castle of St Angelo -- the only grand objects on our way -- could only look disappointing to me. I believe the impression on entering from the Naples side is quite different: there, one must get a glimpse of the broken grandeur and Renaissance splendour that one associates with the word "Rome." So keep up your spirits in the omnibus when your turn comes, and believe that you will mount the Capitol the next morning, as we did, and look out on the Forum and the Coliseum, far on to the Alban mountains, with snowy Apennines behind them, and feel -- what I leave you to imagine, because the rain has left off, and my husband commands me to put on my bonnet.
(Two hours later.) Can you believe that I have not had a headache since we set out? But I would willingly have endured more than one to be less anxious than I am about Mr Lewes's health. Now that we are just come in from our walk to the Pantheon, he is obliged to lie down with terrible oppression of the head; and since we have been in Rome he has been nearly deaf on one side. That is the dark "crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air" just now: everything else in our circumstances here is perfect. We are glad to have been driven into apartments, instead of remaining at the hotel as we had intended; for we enjoy the abundance of room and the quiet that belongs to this mode of life, and we get our cooking and all other comforts in perfection at little more than a third of the hotel prices. Most of the visitors to Rome this season seem to come only for a short stay, and as apartments can't be taken for less than a month, the hotels are full and the lodgings are empty. Extremely unpleasant for the people who have lodgings to let, but very convenient for us, since we get excellent rooms in a good situation for a moderate price. We have a good little landlady, who can speak nothing but Italian, so that she serves as a parlatrice for us, and awakens our memory of Italian dialogue -- a memory which consists chiefly of recollecting Italian words without knowing their meaning, and English words without knowing the Italian for them.
I shall tell you nothing of what we have seen. Have you not a husband who has seen it all, and can tell you much better? Except, perhaps, one sight which might have had some interest for him, namely, Count Cavour, 528 who was waiting with other eminences at the Turin station to receive the Prince de Carignan, 529 the new Viceroy of Tuscany. A really pleasant sight -- not the Prince, who is a large stout "moustache," squeezed in at the waist with a gold belt, looking like one of those dressed-up personages who are among the chessmen that the Cavours of the world play their game with. The pleasant sight was Count Cavour, in plainest dress, with a head full of power, mingled with bonhomie. We had several fellow-travellers who belonged to Savoy, and were full of chagrin at the prospect of the French annexation. Our most agreeable companion was a Baron de Magliano, a Neapolitan who has married a French wife with a large fortune, and has been living in France for years, but has now left his wife and children behind for the sake of entering the Sardinian army, and, if possible, helping to turn out the Neapolitan Bourbons. I feel some stirrings of the insurrectionary spirit myself when I see the red pantaloons at every turn in the streets of Rome. I suppose Mrs Browning could explain to me that this is part of the great idea nourished in the soul of the modern saviour Louis Napoleon, and that for the French to impose a hateful government on the Romans is the only proper sequence to the story of the French Revolution.
Oh, the beautiful men and women and children here! Such wonderful babies with wise eyes! -- such grand-featured mothers nursing them! As one drives along the streets sometimes, one sees a madonna and child at every third or fourth upper window; and on Monday a little crippled girl seated at the door of a church looked up at us with a face full of such pathetic sweetness and beauty, that I think it can hardly leave me again. 530 Yesterday we went to see dear Shelley's tomb, and it was like a personal consolation to me to see that simple outward sign that he is at rest, where no hatred can ever reach him again. Poor Keats's tombstone, with that despairing bitter inscription, is almost as painful to think of as Swift's. 531
And what have you been doing, being, or suffering in these long twelve days? While we were standing with weary impatience in the customhouse at Civita Vecchia, Mr Congreve was delivering his third lecture, and you were listening. And what else?
Friday. Since I wrote my letter we have not been able to get near the post-office. Yesterday was taken up with seeing ceremonies, or rather with waiting for them. I knelt down to receive the Pope's blessing, remembering what Pius VII. said to the soldier -- that he would never be the worse for the blessing of an old man. But altogether, these ceremonies are a melancholy, hollow business, and we regret bitterly that the Holy Week has taken up our time from better things. I have a cold and headache this morning, and in other ways am not conscious of improvement from the Pope's blessing. I may comfort myself with thinking that the king of Sardinia is none the worse for the Pope's curse. 532 It is farcical enough that the excommunication is posted up at the Church of St John Lateran, out of everybody's way, and yet there are police to guard it.
Text: Cross, II, 193-198.
A wet day for the first time since we left Paris! That assists our consciences considerably in urging us to write our letters on this fourth day at Rome, for I will not pretend that writing a letter, even to you, can be anything more alluring than a duty when there is a blue sky over the Coliseum and the Arch of Constantine, and all the other marvels of this marvellous place. Since our arrival in the middle of Sunday, I have been gradually rising from the depth of disappointment to an intoxication of delight; and that makes me wish to do for you what no one ever did for me -- warn you that you must expect no grand impression on your first entrance into Rome, at least if you enter it from Civita Vecchia. My heart sank, as it would if you behaved shabbily to me, when I looked through the windows of the omnibus as it passed through street after street of ugly modern Rome, and in that mood the dome of St Peter's and the Castle of St Angelo -- the only grand objects on our way -- could only look disappointing to me. I believe the impression on entering from the Naples side is quite different: there, one must get a glimpse of the broken grandeur and Renaissance splendour that one associates with the word "Rome." So keep up your spirits in the omnibus when your turn comes, and believe that you will mount the Capitol the next morning, as we did, and look out on the Forum and the Coliseum, far on to the Alban mountains, with snowy Apennines behind them, and feel -- what I leave you to imagine, because the rain has left off, and my husband commands me to put on my bonnet.
(Two hours later.) Can you believe that I have not had a headache since we set out? But I would willingly have endured more than one to be less anxious than I am about Mr Lewes's health. Now that we are just come in from our walk to the Pantheon, he is obliged to lie down with terrible oppression of the head; and since we have been in Rome he has been nearly deaf on one side. That is the dark "crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air" just now: everything else in our circumstances here is perfect. We are glad to have been driven into apartments, instead of remaining at the hotel as we had intended; for we enjoy the abundance of room and the quiet that belongs to this mode of life, and we get our cooking and all other comforts in perfection at little more than a third of the hotel prices. Most of the visitors to Rome this season seem to come only for a short stay, and as apartments can't be taken for less than a month, the hotels are full and the lodgings are empty. Extremely unpleasant for the people who have lodgings to let, but very convenient for us, since we get excellent rooms in a good situation for a moderate price. We have a good little landlady, who can speak nothing but Italian, so that she serves as a parlatrice for us, and awakens our memory of Italian dialogue -- a memory which consists chiefly of recollecting Italian words without knowing their meaning, and English words without knowing the Italian for them.
I shall tell you nothing of what we have seen. Have you not a husband who has seen it all, and can tell you much better? Except, perhaps, one sight which might have had some interest for him, namely, Count Cavour, 528 who was waiting with other eminences at the Turin station to receive the Prince de Carignan, 529 the new Viceroy of Tuscany. A really pleasant sight -- not the Prince, who is a large stout "moustache," squeezed in at the waist with a gold belt, looking like one of those dressed-up personages who are among the chessmen that the Cavours of the world play their game with. The pleasant sight was Count Cavour, in plainest dress, with a head full of power, mingled with bonhomie. We had several fellow-travellers who belonged to Savoy, and were full of chagrin at the prospect of the French annexation. Our most agreeable companion was a Baron de Magliano, a Neapolitan who has married a French wife with a large fortune, and has been living in France for years, but has now left his wife and children behind for the sake of entering the Sardinian army, and, if possible, helping to turn out the Neapolitan Bourbons. I feel some stirrings of the insurrectionary spirit myself when I see the red pantaloons at every turn in the streets of Rome. I suppose Mrs Browning could explain to me that this is part of the great idea nourished in the soul of the modern saviour Louis Napoleon, and that for the French to impose a hateful government on the Romans is the only proper sequence to the story of the French Revolution.
Oh, the beautiful men and women and children here! Such wonderful babies with wise eyes! -- such grand-featured mothers nursing them! As one drives along the streets sometimes, one sees a madonna and child at every third or fourth upper window; and on Monday a little crippled girl seated at the door of a church looked up at us with a face full of such pathetic sweetness and beauty, that I think it can hardly leave me again. 530 Yesterday we went to see dear Shelley's tomb, and it was like a personal consolation to me to see that simple outward sign that he is at rest, where no hatred can ever reach him again. Poor Keats's tombstone, with that despairing bitter inscription, is almost as painful to think of as Swift's. 531
And what have you been doing, being, or suffering in these long twelve days? While we were standing with weary impatience in the customhouse at Civita Vecchia, Mr Congreve was delivering his third lecture, and you were listening. And what else?
Friday. Since I wrote my letter we have not been able to get near the post-office. Yesterday was taken up with seeing ceremonies, or rather with waiting for them. I knelt down to receive the Pope's blessing, remembering what Pius VII. said to the soldier -- that he would never be the worse for the blessing of an old man. But altogether, these ceremonies are a melancholy, hollow business, and we regret bitterly that the Holy Week has taken up our time from better things. I have a cold and headache this morning, and in other ways am not conscious of improvement from the Pope's blessing. I may comfort myself with thinking that the king of Sardinia is none the worse for the Pope's curse. 532 It is farcical enough that the excommunication is posted up at the Church of St John Lateran, out of everybody's way, and yet there are police to guard it.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Maria [Mrs. Richard] Congreve, Rome, 4-6 April 1860, Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/93669