GIA.NNETTO.* Tars slight story is perhaps even more admirable a
subject for artistic treatment than the treatment which it here receives is admirable, though that is sufficiently graceful and fascinating. Lady Margaret Majendie has taken a subject which fills and charms the imagination, without partaking in any degree of that empty idealism and unreality of tone which so often spoils the stories of Southern, and especially of Italian life. But the fragmentary way in which
Cianmetto. By Lady Margaret Majendie (originally published in Blac.iwoods Magaane). William Blackwood and Sons.
she has chosen to put the tale together, by piecing the detached portions of it which the English narrator is supposed to have picked up at intervals of years, seems to us to do but in- adequate justice to the natural romance of the story itself. Granted the imperfect form,—granted, that is, the separate joints in the chain which the Englishman who tells it is sup- posed to get possession of, one by one,—there is but little fault to be found with the literary work. it is simple, lively, and full of that deep feeling for beauty, both of scenery and sentiment, which the passion of the Southern nature it depicts, demands. But pictures in three or four separate panels are always a little disappointing, and still more is that the case when some of the panels which come late in the series are less carefully executed than the earlier ones, and this though the interest of the subject is rising as the minuteness of the treatment falls off. The scene at Rome, for instance, in this story is decidedly inferior in vividness and significance to the scenes on the south coast of France, at Venice, and in Florence. And yet it is a story that deserves to be told otherwise than in snatches. It seems to us that it would have made a story of great power, if conceived and welded together into a complete whole. Sometimes an artist of great skill will know how to lend a charm to that effect of ambiguity which fragmentary and not quite authentic hear-say produces on the imagination of the reader. Hawthorne was very fond of this effect, and used it with much delicacy. But then what he showed us was not so much a story as the subtle guessei of a brooding imagination at the story of a stormy life, and a great part of the charm of the subject, for his readers, was in the mode in which the colder nature of that subtle mind analysed the motives actuating or appearing to actuate the more passionate actors in the drama he described. But that is not so here. The imperfection in the story is not made the excuse for a still more interesting glimpse into the nature of the chronicler himself. What you lose, you lose. When the scene passes abruptly from one place to another, and when even the nominal narrator is changed, there is no artistic reason for the transition. One might even guess that some such story had really been gleaned in this fragmentary fashion, and that this was the sole reason for the form it takes. If that be so, it is, we think, a pity that the author, who threw her imagination so keenly into the tale, did not allow it to grow into a whole in her own mind before telling it at all. What we have here is so very good, that the breaks and discontinuities are more marked and more jarring than they would be with a tale of less passion and less power.
The subject is a thoroughly Southern one. An Italian fisher- man on the coast of the Corniche, near Nice, born dumb, but with no deafness and with the organs of speech perfectly formed, grows up with a passionate love of music, and with a daily-increasing bitterness of heart against the fate that has deprived him of speech, a bitterness which daily increases in consequence of the ridicule cast over the man by his companions for the inarticulate sounds in which alone he can express his feel- ings. He is taken by the Englishman who is supposed to tell the story to Nice, for medical advice, where both the doctors con- sulted declare the case hopeless, the more so for the apparent absence of any physical defect in the organs of speech ; and the lad's ambition, which this glimpse of the larger life had greatly raised, turns to even more passionate despair than ever, when he hears his sentence. He returns home, meets a singer from the chorus of the Opera at Florence, has a fit of profound anguish, crying his heart out at the doom which bids his passionate love for music remain pent up in his breast, and then, while alone in his fishing-boat on the Mediterranean in the midst of an awful hurri- cane and thunderstorm, he cries out in his heart, "Only grant me the power of speech, and I care not for death or hell ! Speech, speech ! and I care not for my soul!" Suddenly, owing partlyperhaps to the great electric excitement of the elements, partly to the intense nervous excitement of his whole organisation, the man suddenly gains his voice, and believes that he has gained it by the sacrifice of his soul. He returns home a changed man, with a marvellous voice and a high ambition, but a sullen and spell-bound soul, and the profoundest belief that if ever he repents and asks for forgiveness for his sin, his dumbness will return. He leaves his mother and the good priest who taught him all he knew, without telling them of his plans or destination, and goes to study music in Italy, earning his subsistence meanwhile by the little he can get for singing in the streets and cafés. He rises rapidly, and marries a gentle saint, one of the Italian devout women, whose great grief is her husband's complete alienation from God and all things holy,—an alienation which, however, be shows only by his horror of churches and worship, and his resolution never to return to his mother and those who had known him in his dumbness, and who held therefore in their hands the means of guessing at the costly sacrifice by which he had, as he supposed, recovered his speech ; for in all other respects his life is full of benevolence, tenderness, and generosity, though the profound melancholy with which he thinks of the chasm that lies between his own soul and his wife's, darkens their life together. The story tells how by the grief which the loss, first of his child and then of his wife, brings upon him, and by the aid of an eloquent Franciscan friar, Giannetto is reconciled to himself and his God, and the pathos of this part of the story is genuine and deep. But as we have said before, the breaks in the tale are trying, and diminish its charm. Still no one can lay down the book without reading to the end, or without failing to be impressed by that end when it comes.
It is not a tale which gives much opening for the picture of character in its lighter phases, and it would be doing much in- justice to the beauty of the more tragic parts to quote fragments from them. In one or two sketches, however,—especially in that of Giannetto's mother-in-law, Signora Celeste, the Florentine lady who bursts upon her English guests "like a whirlwind,"— Lady Margaret Majendie shows that she can outline the more .superficial characteristics of modern life at least as well as those deeper characters whose story furnishes her with a subject for pathos and passion :—
" He was interrupted by the door flying open, and the abrupt entrance of Signora Celeste, followed by her daughter. It was as if a whirlwind had burst into the room. 'Good morning, Signor Conte. Signorina Elena, I have the honour to salute you. I hope I see you in good health. It grieved me to hear from my son-in-law that you are not strong. Be seated. We have heard much of you from Giovanni. He tells me,' she continued, without taking breath, that he made ac- quaintance with you some years ago at Nice, and that he lies under obligations to you. We are grateful,' she added; 'you do us great honour in visiting us thus, and the opportunity of offering you our thanks we shall hold very dear.' I endeavoured to disclaim all thanks, but she did not pause. And the Signorina, does she divert herself in Florence ? I fear but little goes on at this moment. She has without doubt visited the Cascine every Sunday afternoon ? The Grand Duchess is almost always there, and it is very gay. Do the Signori contemplate being here for the Carnival? There are to be great doings this year ; and certain Signori of the principal families are to have balls. The Signorina without doubt loves dancing? She is of an age to do so. Elvira loved it much formerly; but since she is married she is quite changed,—sho thinks of nothing but her husband and child, and the music. Really, it is a trial of patience—a weariness—when she and her father and Giovanni begin with their everlasting music. Not a word can one get in. And what with the violin and the pianoforte, and now Binds, now La Caprera, coming in to practiss with Giovanni, life is a burden. The people in the streets come under the windows to listen, but I hope I may have put a stop to that ; for when they are all listen- ing, Violante and I are often obliged to throw water and vegetables out of the window. Can I help it?—bah! one must keep one's house clean!' —'Assuredly,' said the Cavaliere, mildly. But wherefore thus outrage their feelings? Poor souls ! it is to them a great diversion.'—She quietly ignored his words. 'And the Signor Conte has taken the Villa Vacchini?' she continued. 'La Signora Vacchini is one in a thousand ! an excellent person; she is much my friend. Without doubt, it is her agent Signor Ettore Bonifazio who bas arranged with these Signori? He is a good man : but, Santa Maria! what fat ! he is a bill—a moun- tain I La Vacehini at one time had it in her mind to marry him ; but I said to her, "Lucia, my dear, beware, it is a sack—a mountain—you would marry. An agitation—a slight fright—he is seized with an apo- plexy, and you are again a widow !" Had I not reason? And she is in good circumstances. She has a large hotel in the Piazza Nueva, avhich foreigners frequent much; and she has also the Villa Vacchini, -and certain olive and vineyards in the bills near the Cortese. I hope,' she continued, suddenly breaking off, that you remain satisfied that she does well by you? '—'Perfectly,' I answered. 'All I have had to ask for has been done excellently by Signor Bonifazio.'—'I rejoice to hear it ; for if it had not been so, I would have said to her, "Lucia, it is a shame, a wickedness, that you have not attended better to these foreigners that are so kind and so good." My second daughter L'Ade- laide is betrothed to her eldest son ; he wanted Elvira, but even at that time, when Giovanni was in Russia, I could see that her heart—'— 'Mamma, for pity's sake,' broke in the sweet voice of Giovanni's wife, the first words I had heard her speak."
That passage will be sufficent to convince our readers that Lady Margaret Majendie is no mere sentimentalist, who delights in the picture of unreal sorrows. And her renderings of Italian scenery, —her pictures of the life in Venice, for instance,—are at least as real and beautiful as the sketch of Signora Celeste is lively. But after all, the power of the book is concentrated in the story of the unique religious struggle which it describes, and which is not the less real and powerful because the physical event on which the young singer's fate turns, is superstitiously ascribed by him to the power of an evil being. It was the real defiance of God in his own soul which had filled him originally with awe and despair, and it was the real knowledge that he would rather lose God than lose his voice again, which still held him aloof from prayer and worship. Thus the moral conflict which this powerful little tale is meant to describe is a thoroughly real one, even though there is a look of superstition in the logic by which Gianetto con- vinced himself of the moral hopelessness of his condition. Lady Margaret Majendie may easily give us a better book. But this tale is full of power and promise.
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