網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

Dr. Piper's Trees of America-Minard Lafe-

ver's Architectural Instructor-Haswell's

Mechanics' Tables-Mr. Prescott's Robert-

son's Charles the Fifth-Letters and Dis-

patches of Major Nathanael Greene-Mr.

Wright's History of France-Dr. Hitch-

cock's Religious Truth Illustrated from

Science-Count Gasparin's Scientific Expo-

sition of Modern Spiritualism-The Youth

of the Old Dominion; by Samuel Hopkins

-Dickens's Works for Little Folks. 322

Dr. Kane-Household Edition of Scott-

Fowler's American Pulpit-Mrs. Sigour

ney's Examples from the Eighteenth and

Nineteenth Centuries-Wiso's Scampavias

-Doubts concerning the Battle of Bunker

Hill-Caldwell's Poems-Vaux's Villas and

Cottages-Simms's Wigwam and the Cabin

-Parker's Minnesota Hand-book, and Iowa

Hand-book-Andrews's Minnesota and Da-

436

Spencer's Poem-Mackenzie's Fraserian Pa-

pers-Elliott's New England History-Os-

canyan's Sultan and his People-Bishop

Hopkins's American Citizen-Spurgeon's

Sermons-New Biographies-Doran's Mon.

archs retired from Business-Souvestre's

Britanny and La Vendée.

Mrs. Jamieson's Characteristics of Women-

Gurowski's Europe and America-Glad-

stone's Englishman in Kansas - Major

Jones's Courtship and Travels

Hentz's Love after Marriage-Frank For-

ester's Sporting Scenes and Characters-

Bacon's Essays-Railway Classics-Baird's

Modern Greece-Barry Cornwall's Dra-

matic Scenes-Reed's Lectures-- Schaff's

Germany; its Universities. Theology, and

Religion-Waverley Novels-Miss Strick-

land's Lives of the Queens of Scotland-

Macaulay's Sketches.

[ocr errors]

659

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

THE WORLD OF NEW YORK.-The Summer

loth to leave us-The necessities of Winter

Life A "Happy New Year"-New Year's

Day in New York-Balls, public and pri

vate The Academy of Music - Madame

Lagrange-Traviata-Miss Laura Keene-

Young New York-M. Thalberg-Darley's

Margaret-Mr. Palmer and his Precious

Gifts Mr. Welford's Engraving, from Mr.

Wandesforde's Picture of Florence Night-

ingale.

108

An Old Adage-The Love of Art-Justinus

Kerner, the German Poet-It is good to cul-

tivate Society-The great Cities of Europe

and their Charms-The Arts of Europe-

Dullness of American Society-There is no

want of Liberality in America-Everybody

wants the Opera-Difficulties in the way-

Why is this?-The Enterprising Mr. Stra

kosch-An Opera can be established in Now

York-The début of Madame de Wilhorst

-Wallack's Theatre and Miss Matilda
Heron--The Academy Exhibition-Palmer's
Marbles-The Crystal Palace, and what we
would have the dear Reader do.

Spring should have come-Cheated by Feb-

ruary-Winter not over-Lent and the com-

ing Easter-A Christian Man-No Balls in

Lent-Easy to caricature its observance-

Mrs. Smith's sackcloth and Mrs. Brown's

holy horror-- Let us be grateful - Mrs.

Smith's Ball: a festivity or a frivolity-Not

an entertainment-Not a satisfactory state

of things-Balls vs. Processions, Spectacles,

etc.-Dancing Women-Christendom eman-

cipates and refines amusements-The first

Ball-Our Forefathers and Balls-Ball on

the marriage of the Duke of Burgundy-The

Supper and Dancing-An admirer of the

Grand Monarque-Something to be remem-

bered-A rare ornament of an American

Ball-room-The World's eagerness and cu-

riosity Is all amusement frivolous?—No

adequate and legitimate excitements-For-

getfulness of our Tradesmen, Mechanics,

etc.-A few Questions.

443

Two Themes-Seize the flying moment-A
pleasant belief-Mrs. Howe's "Leonore"-
The first night-Made up houses—“ Leo-
nore" not a play-No lovers of cant-Com
position of the play-The failure of "Leo-
nore"-Miss Heron charmed New York-
Her imperfection-Our preference. ⚫

557

PUTNAM'S MONTHLY.

A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art.

VOL. IX.-JANUARY, 1857.-NO. XLIX.

AN

ITALIANS IN AMERICA.

ON urbane violinist from Como, who led the orchestra in the theatre of my native town, first revealed to me the Epicurean side of life. My elders of that austere community, were anxious plodders; they did everything by rule; a thrifty, grave set, whose ideal was respectability, and their universal test common sense-formalists, utilitarians, who eat, walked, transacted business, married and died. with little apparent emotion, and in a perfectly decent but extremely uninteresting way. Sometimes a vague idea flitted across my overtasked brain, that there was another kind of life somewhere on earth; and, as a child, I wished myself Mungo Park, with that amiable negress singing to me in the African desert, Crusoe's man Friday, milking goats, or even poor Belzoni, half-smothered in mummy-dust in an Egyptian catacomb at least, that I might try another mundane sphere; but it was the jolly violinist who, apart from books, convinced me there was an absolutely enjoyable vein in the mere act of living, a way to take things easy, a possible art of being happy. He used to breakfast in a flowered robe de chambre at ten o'clock, chat, by the half hour, with any one who would stop with him at the street corner, take zestful pinches of snuff, pat boys on the head, laugh at mere trifles, look in at shop windows, nibble lumps of sugar, pet a canary, and, every night, flourish his bow with a good-will that was magnetic. All this VOL. IX.-1

[ocr errors]

was such a violation of the current philosophy of life, such a free, irresponsible, genial exception to the general rule, that it fairly bewildered me; and all the answer I could obtain, when trying to solve the problem by catechising_my respectable fellow-citizens, was, He's an Italian." Happy race, thought I, exempt from care, children of nature, living by music! But there was one more specimen of the nation among us, whose demeanor quite contradicted my theory. Every afternoon he passed our house, looking so melancholy and abstracted that it made one pity his beautiful little greyhound, who followed as if afraid to gambol. That slender and sad figure was a perfect contrast to the round, chirping musician; and even the tinkle of his dog's silver bells was foreign to merriment. One day, when the hush and gloom of an impending thunder-storm made our quiet street more deserted than usual, he went by with a shadow, deeper than the heavens wore, on his pale forehead, and the dark eye below seemed alive with the latent fire of a mad resolve; he ascended the granite steps of a mansion, where we had often seen him keeping vigil in the summer moonlight; it was the home of a fair, wealthy pupil, whom he had wooed in vain; the servant hesitated to admit him; he rushed by, ascended to the lady's boudoir, demanded again to know her final answer to his irresistible

passion, was once more calmly but firmly denied, placed a pistol to his

breast and shot himself dead. His corpse stretched on the floor, with the little dog crouched upon the breathless chest, and moaning piteously, was a spectacle not to be erased from a young and appalled heart. This early experience of the actual comedy and tragedy of human life, identified both, to my imagination, with Italians. Years after, in their beautiful land, the manners, the incidents, the associations and the literature expanded and confirmed this impression. I witnessed their demonstrative habits, the gestures of the market-place, the language of the passions, the emotional temperament, the ardor, the sensibility, and the exaggeration so characteristic of that home of genius, beauty and woe. I found the glow of history and art in the living men and women around me: Salvator's wildness, Machiavelli's cunning, Raphael's tenderness, Tasso's romance, Dante's gloom, Alfieri's pride, Boccaccio's luxury of sensation, Titian's radiant color, Bellini's sentiment, Petrarch's grace, yet visible on the bright surface or shadowy depth of actual life; and understood why, on this soil, the great poet of our common nature sought the dramatic story and the impassioned character, whereon to graft his matchless conceptions. Hence, in the more restrained and uniform life around me, I cannot pass unheeded any remnant or token of that ardent clime. Even the poor organ-grinder is to me a pilgrim from the land of song, and the imagevender a "missionary of art;" frescos and maccaroni breathe of Rome and Naples; an old master, or the semblance of one, inspires reverence, and the tenor who is so ridiculously jealous of the prima donna, the basso who is so boastful of his hunting achievements, and only shoots sparrows, and blows off his fingers; and the barytone who has such a conceit of his horsemanship and rides like a goose, excite a certain sympathy-they are so like children in the dwarfed manhood of their nation's civic infancy, dashed to subserviency by ill-fortune, and elated to complacent self-confidence by success.

Italian refugees, without resources or education, suffer, here and elsewhere, the worst penalties of expatriation. The recent appeal of nine Tuscan peasants to the municipal authorities of New York, exposes the fraudulent means resorted to abroad, to

shake off the irritating load of unprovided labor; and there is no class of emigrants, who, from their want of adaptation, strong home attachments, and inability to cope with a new climate and foreign habits, claim such ready sympathy. Among the large intermediate class, between the contadini and the highly cultivated, this natural inaptitude, sensitiveness, and ignorance of the world, produce some ludicrous contrasts of character and circumstances, they often prove the most difficult people to help, the most amiable of marplots, as a few sketches of my protégés will illustrate:

Il Dottore brought municipal certificates, heavy with seals and faded ribbons, and chirography attesting his coragio during a pestilence in the little town of the Roman states, where his life hitherto had glided on serenely between monotonous provincial bounds. Swarthy, melancholic, and sensitive, he wore only black-not even a blanched collar relieving the solemn costume; lithe, nervous, agile, brooding, and martyr-like, he looked unutterable woe from his dark, gloomy eye to his flitting smile and deprecating motion-a gentle cross between Machiavelli and Werther. For his narrow experience and delicate organization the political crisis had proved too great a trial. Sent to the Roman assembly, because of his private worth, the bold words of the Triumvir and the fierce valor of Garibaldi, the noise of bombs, the glitter of French bayonets and the sacrifice of patriots, were too much for nerve and heart; he stole off with the earliest fugitives and succeeded in reaching America unscathed; but a thousand fears pursued him he was jealous of his wife left behind; jealous of his brother exiles; jealous of his new patrons; of Austrian spies; of encroaching poverty; of the law, and the Pope. He had a habit of stepping quickly aside, as if in danger of a shot; of gliding stealthily; of glancing furtively-he acted like a man with blood-hounds on his track and a price on his head, and this unconscious betrayal of an apprehensive mood in an American city, was a most affecting token of the keen and cruel despotism he had tried to brave and vainly escaped.

His presence was like "coming events," and "cast a shadow before." He would sit for hours, silent, dark, almost reproachful, in gay drawing

rooms, and amid cheerful company. He grew tremulous when liberal opinions were ascribed to him, repudiated the Italian movement as a mistake, identified Mazzini's doctrines with fanaticism, lamented his own credulity, and heartily wished himself uncompromised as of old, in his little house in the pontifical states. The difficulty in securing classes for Il Dottore was, that he gave young people the blues. They began by sympathizing with the melancholy exile, but soon finding him inaccessible and suspicious, the lesson became a penance, and the soft bastard Latin" fraught with Dantesque associations of darkness and doom.

Every week, Il Dottore came to me with an injured air, and declared he should withdraw from this and the other pupil-acquired with no little difficulty-because convinced that he was employed merely from pity; another he renounced for the reason that they differed in political opinions; a third showed too much levity; a fourth was anti-Catholic. One day he abruptly took his leave, saying he should go to Iowa, and cultivate the soil. I ventured to hint that his delicate frame was inadequate to rude labor; that his small savings would not purchase land enough; that his education and tastes would not coalesce with hardy and illiterate neighbors: he was deaf to such reasoning, and, with visions of Cincinnatus, Ferney and Vaucluse, went forth to see his castle in the air vanish before the chills, fever, and isolation of a wet prairie.

My next protégé was of the species militaire. He had served under Guerazzi in Tuscany, and delivered critical dissertations upon that unfortunate patriot's conduct, as technical and verbose as Uncle Toby's on the famous seige of Namur. He affected brief sentences, made copious use of phrases rife among soldiers, and had the air of a man fresh from camp. He wore a faded blue coat, buttoned up to the chin; his head was always erect, his gesture abrupt, his eye stern, and his intonation that of one accustomed to call the roll or echo an order. His very buon giorno was exploded from under his fierce moustache. If I ventured an opinion on the state of Europe, he answered by army statistics; if I suggested a diversion, an acquaintance, or a book that did not chime in with

his humor, he responded, in a lofty and deprecating tone, "Signor, sono soldato." Had he been the commandant of a fortress, and myself his prisoner, he could not have stood more thoroughly on his professional dignity. Although Carlo Alberto's army had long since ceased to exist, he spoke of it as if entrenched near by, and himself absent on leave. All this time the poor fellow was destitute, and his ostensible motive for very frequent visits was to obtain pupils. Those I succeeded in finding, soon grew weary of his military reserve and authoritative pronunciation, and regarded him as a frigid Thaddeus of Warsaw; his male pupils feared a challenge, his female a catastrophe, so intent, alert, official, and resolute was his air. He would bow stiffly upon entering the room, place himself squarely in a seat, fix his eyes, fold his arms, hear the lesson as if it were an indictment for treason, correct an error sternly, and, with "grim-visaged war" on his brow, seem every moment about to chant, in a deep bass voice, Suoni la tromba! Nervous students were discomfited, and when they resigned this ungenial tuition, and ventured some excuse or sympathizing word with the quarter's payment, the giovane soldato would thrust the cash uncounted into his breast-pocket and gravely reply-Sono in esiglio; vivo per la patria mia; addio! and march forth like the leader of a forlorn hope about to storm an entrenchment. When France and England declared war against Russia, he came to me with an Extra Sun in one hand, and an American passport in the other, refusing to be seated; and, with his napless hat under his arm, and his high stock buckled tighter than ever, announced his intention of embarking for Turkey the next day, to join the Allies. In vain I represented that this measure would bring no advantage to his country. He complacently informed me that when Russia was subdued, the Italian regiments would instantly proceed to take Rome, bring King Bomba to a court-martial, and force Sardinia to declare a republic; and, with this programme sonorously enunciated, he gave me a military salute and disappeared forever.

Then came the Avocato, who had made a figure at the bar of Venice in his youth, and helped overhaul the treacherous archives of Austrian rule, when that romantic city fell into the hands of the revolu

He

tionists. He had what De Stael attributed to Gouverneur Morris, l'air très imposant; his iron-gray hair and lofty forehead, broad chest, deliberate carriage and distinct, emphatic speech, seemed to assure me that an exile of the rational school had now appeared. There was no impulse in his manner, look, or words; every idea he expressed was a formula; even words of mere courtesy were arranged like a proposition; all he had done and intended to do-from a programme of civil government to the choice of a lodging, from a system of tuition to the tie of a cravat-was logically-stated. Instead of the exuberant, random blood of "Young Italy," here, I thought, was an old-fashioned formalist, whom it was only requisite to put in a satisfactory track, and he would jog on prosperously. This view was encouraged by the definite aim and sensie expectations of the poor Avocato, whose scrupulously clean, but threadbare, apparel hinted too plainly the need of immediate employment. proposed to find a situation as teacher of languages in a college, and there was that in his manners and appearance which carried with them a strong recommendation for such an office. ters were, accordingly, written, professors consulted, testimonials forwarded, and interest made in every quarter; at last came an offer from Michigan, terms, situation, and prospects all that could be hoped for, and I soon had the pleasure to know that my dignified and argumentative friend was installed in a respectable and sufficiently lucrative post. A few months elapsed, when he made his appearance once more, better dressed, more robust, and a little more lofty in his air; his salutation was, as usual, elaborate and exact; when concluded, he spoke of the weather, the last news from abroad, and other incidental topics, and, upon my inquiring the probable time of his absence from the college, he smiled sarcastically, and remarked that he had left never to return. I ventured to ask if there was any better place in view? "None whatever."

[ocr errors]

Let

And pray, signor, may I inquire why you gave up so desirable a means of subsistence after the trouble we had in procuring it?" He drew himself up, raised his hand gracefully, and assumed that overwhelming look with which lawyers adduce final testimony or clinch an argument. I was prepared to hear of an

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

There is still an evident inkling of the feudal sentiment of dependence in the relation between Italian peasants and hereditary landowners; and it is very impressive to an American to recognize this feeling in such of the humbler class as become either his employés or protégés. The appeal to "excellenza's protezione" is strange to republican ears, and the expectations thereby cherished quite romantic; but, the sentiment, if striking from its novelty in Italy, is almost ludicrous, from its contrast to popular habits and the prevalent self-reliance in New York. I readily forgave, therefore, the surprised grin of the waiter who beheld my first interview with Zanetti-a comical-looking fellow, half contadino and half exquisite, with a dash of the harlequin and a smattering of all accomplishments, gyratory, rhetorical and poetic. He wore a conical hat, a slashed velvet coat, a very gay vest, somewhat tarnished, a glittering brooch, and elaborate watch-chain-exhibiting altogether the kind of flash poverty that instantly reveals a continental origin. He led by the hand a little boy, arrayed in silk of varied tints, with a smutched face and a brilliant eye. The pair looked like actors fresh from the foot-lights; the father was about to drop on his knees as he proffered a begrimed letter of introduction, addressed, as he reverentially declared, to the Americano amico d'Italia, whom he considered his unica speranza in a land whose language he could not speak, and where, having just landed with only six dollars, an invalid wife, and this carissimo bambino, he confidently expected to gain fame and fortune, his illustrissimo protettore to provide for him, meanwhile! Here was a new dilemma-the Italian Monsieur Tonson once more under a new metamorphosis; a foreign cross between Skimpole and Micawber. In a few days he brought me a circular to translate, which would have done honor to the ingenious eloquence of the latter; so nicely were mingled in its composition, the plea of domestic love and want,

« 上一頁繼續 »