A Pension in Italy
Whitridge, Arnold
September 8, 1926 T H I? C O M M O N W E A L 423 of kings and the king of preachers," frequently sur- passed the eloquence...
...A future tell us, if we give him half a chance...
...Wiseman is held in high and dependents, but in a pension they are suddenly esteem...
...deprived of their background...
...There is too large Of figures poising and at ease a proportion of Anglo-Saxons for general conversa- With discs for throwing...
...Of course Symonds...
...We study each other...
...it must he her standard of comfort and not yours...
...the great Jesuit was essentially a SOONER or later everyone who travels stays at preacher...
...but professionally, they are blatant of fame, it is enough to say that, besides being one of internationalists...
...unless he be so crippled with riches grandeur and magnificence, Bourdaloue is master in that he falls a helpless victim into the maw of solid, rigorous, irresistible logic...
...While Bossuet is without an equal in a pension...
...At home he may be a can, Father Burke, whom many have called the great- militant Anglo-Catholic...
...Don't think that we have all become In eave above the architrave, friends-or even acquaintances...
...but the sounder judgment of time has at any hour of the day or night...
...Poor things, they have been living in exile of other people's newspapers, is not genuine reading...
...September 8, 1926 T H I? C O M M O N W E A L 423 of kings and the king of preachers," frequently surpassed the eloquence of his intimate friend and ad- A PENSION IN ITALY mirer, Bossuet...
...strive to safeguard the poor tourist from the slightest suggestion of nostalgia...
...Incidentally, we did As statues at their play see them this morning going through the gallery Is strangely far more beautiful, with an inexorable guide...
...Why...
...They make the mistake of going three-quarters of Massillon, the Oratorian, is similar in many respects the way to meet the traveler instead of making him to both the preachers ranked above him...
...Newman, indeed, deserves the greatest praise...
...a thorn in the flesh of his est English-speaking orator of the nineteenth century...
...and hence more often she, is equally anxious to make you comthey did not reach the sublimity of eloquence that fortable...
...Apparently, they placed him beneath them...
...Whether or not Proving that is true of the critics, it certainly is true of people That all is music in the end who live in pensions...
...We bear no ill will to Mr...
...A moment ago we seemed to have an un- But not before it gives, limited appetite-now our capacity for appreciation is In unaccounted ways, exhausted, and we can only think about lunch and our A wound which will not mend...
...but we know him only as a resoIn our own land, we also have had great preachers...
...In their his subject, spoke on the inspiration of the moment...
...in Florence and that gentle guide-book exercise and furtive skimming Luchon...
...but perhaps they would not have Della Robbias to the country clergyman and the old been happy-and anyway what is the use of regretting ladies...
...He, or monarch who craved religious discourse...
...since the war...
...One of them is a Russian...
...But is it not too soon to judge...
...They sublime, but never attained the sublimity of Bossuet...
...Italy than any of us, and the efficient Signora treats Here, most decidedly, we all live together...
...Ire was go three-quarters of the way to meet them...
...Let us admit at once that home in Malaga and Hindhead...
...of Bourdaloue...
...recognizes him as her foremost preacher...
...That may be a more raThe American lady is perhaps the most interesting tional way of life, and in the long run we would not member of our pension family...
...For one thing, it makes us forget that we it now...
...prefer to have it left an open question...
...Almost every religious that loquacious American who has the knack of makorder has given to the pulpit preachers of merit...
...and they followed him with that docility Than that a statue can Be like a man...
...To fix and save Perhaps we are not really a very remarkable group Its flowing . . . at this pension, but we have become much absorbed in By marbled motion in a frieze, each other...
...The other two are English We are associating with the greatest geniuses the who have been forced into exile more prosaically by world has ever known, and a scratch lot of stuffy the high cost of living...
...the Jesuit, de Ravignan...
...In Paris sist on eggs for breakfast and hot water in the middle he introduced the new conference method in the pul- of the night, you will save a vast amount of money, pit of Notre Dame which he occupied intermittently, and what is even more important, the shackles of your from 1835 to 1852, together with his intimate friend, own identity will mysteriously drop away from you...
...His appeal is always the Ritz...
...It was no good going back now, The discus thrower really throws...
...made to the intellect, with never a diversion merely Carlton, or to any of the numerous proprietors of to dazzle or delight the imagination, and rarely an Grand Hotels scattered over Europe...
...Come along," we heard More strong to pull him say, "you only have time to see the most impor- The cord of terror taut, tant pictures...
...Lacordairc, like Bossuet, That is the great charm about life in a pension...
...Low-Church bishop...
...He will quent...
...ing herself as a mujik...
...but he is ranked second to the great By- ARNOLD WHITRIDGE French divine...
...The Bishop of hleaux was preeminently the orator...
...France, however, lacked the stimulus of an admiring The proprietor of a pension is different...
...The Society of Jesus they are guilty of excessive humility...
...Blunden complains that literary critics don't Statues to men, like nature poetry because they see the world exclu- And statues' shadows moving sively in terms of men and women...
...lute sightseer who attacks the Italian language with There have been Archbishops Ryan and Ireland, our a placid determination that confounds the waiter...
...but we really age will be less prejudiced and more just...
...In the ten-hence we have no means of forming a true judg- bosom of the family, these super hotelkeepers may ment of him...
...suddenly cut adrift from all those things that make LOUISE TOWNSEND NICHOLL...
...If A final important period finds its master in the elo- you are willing to play the game her way, and not inquent French Dominican, Pere Lacordaire...
...fellow-pensionnaires...
...for we had suddenly reached the saturation point in The flying javelin is caught pictures...
...we respect Statues to men . each other's idiosyncracies...
...The preachers outside of heart...
...perhaps What does it signify...
...tion, and we have enough imagination between us to But here today prefer private flights of fancy to feeble commonplaces Marble to music comes again, about the weather...
...I have de- No, we are leading a strange life with one foot in a cided that she owned vast estates in the Caucasus and twentieth-century boardinghouse, while we drag the only escaped death during the revolution by disguis- other behind us through palaces of the renaissance...
...ing the most reluctant people his intimate friendsThough our sacred oratory of the past half-century is he an impecunious professor, or is he the head of is conceded to have been good, it is not judged as elo- the biggest biscuit-tin factory in the world...
...Probably it is because we are And only music stays...
...but Newman the scholar, rather than Newman the Take that English clergyman who sits in the corner orator...
...but none tourists may be substantial people with hosts of friends so honored by posterity...
...She knows more about have it otherwise-but it is not true at our pension...
...But to give him a niche in the temple be ardent patriots...
...Ritz or Mr...
...They are equally at no golf, and no reading...
...mortal millions live alone...
...Marble to music come again, Mr...
...424 THE COMMONWEAL September 8, 1926 Then there are those old ladies whose knowledge up our normal life at home-no children, no business, about pensions is so extensive...
...Not for a moment must Unfortunately, Fenelon's sermons were never writhe suspect that he is in a foreign country...
...The best of it is that we rather enjoy this he came into money from a distant cousin just after double life, hustling from Michelangelo and the she refused him...
...They can provide an instantaneous glass of iced water for every American...
...Anybody who wants to know what the most attractive, brilliant, and versatile churchmen the world will be like when national boundaries are of the seventeenth century, he is worthy of a place effaced, need only stay at a big hotel in London, Paris, among the great preachers of so glorious a period in or New York...
...Are they planning an anti- Pediment Fascist coup, as I have assured myself-or is my scep- Music cannot stay, tical companion right in insisting that it is only an But there's a way Italian lesson...
...And best known prelate-preachers...
...but one and all, effort to excite the emotions...
...pride themselves quite justly on their perfect food he was logical, but fell far short of the invincible logic and their faultless service...
...after which surfeit of efficiency and the history of sacred oratory...
...If only the tall one with dark people like ourselves, who are determined to see if eyes had accepted the offer of that young subaltern they can catch the whiff of genius instead of accepting thirty years ago, she would now be living in Mayfair, it scond-hand from Berenson and John Addington the wife of a distinguished major-general...
...that the most high-spirited tourists end by acquiring...
...instead of dawdling over that sentimental Madonna This sculpture lives: by Sassoferrato...
...we know that if that strap- These dancers have been brave ping German couple have had a big morning at the Beyond their knowing...
...but naturally enough, as she is the hostess, marked the revival there...
...Who is the Italian with whom she has long conversations every afternoon...
...His sermons were always given from manu- of the salle-a-manger with his plump wife and his script...
...her with the deference due to the doyen of the troupe...
...It took all the heart out of our sightseeing...
...convenience he will return to the more limited perfecA like revival of oratory took place in Italy, Ger- tion of his own home or his own country with a light many, Spain, and England...
...we too ought to be concentrating on Botticelli's Spring, And no one knows...
...own country these American, English, and German Here again, other lands had preachers...
...Again, there was the eloquent Irish Domini- two rosy-cheeked daughters...
...Uffizi we shall not get much of the macaroni-but we For men to pose don't find it necessary to talk...
...you after having made himself thoroughly conversant with see your fellow-men in only two dimensions...
...Critics of the eighteenth century thought him superior to the Bishop of Meaux and the and an instantaneous cup of tea for every Englishman, eloquent Jesuit...
Vol. 4 • September 1926 • No. 18
